Theatre of the United Kingdom rise of satire in 1960s Britain. The Chichester Festival Theatre was Britain's first modern thrust stage theatre. It was inspired by the Festival Theatre of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival launched by Tyrone Guthrie in the Canadian city of Stratford, Ontario. The inaugural Artistic Director of the Chichester Festival was Sir Laurence Olivier, and it was at Chichester that the first National Theatre company was formed. Chichester's productions would transfer to the National Theatre's base at the Old Vic in London. The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great Britain since 1737.
The Old Vic terminated Hall's contract – again to much negative comment in the press – and put the Old Vic up for sale. In 1998, the building was bought by a new charitable trust, the "Old Vic Theatre Trust 2000". In 2000, the production company Criterion Productions was renamed "Old Vic Productions plc", though relatively few of its productions are at the Old Vic theatre. In 2003, actor Kevin Spacey was appointed as new artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company. Spacey said he wanted to inject new life into the British theatre industry, and bring British and American theatrical talent