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.
Jonathan Holloway (artistic director) at University of Exeter, and started his programming career whilst reading drama there, promoting and presenting bands and artists including The Sugarcubes, Thom Yorke (pre-Radiohead), Siouxsie and The Creatures, Transvision Vamp and The Inspiral Carpets. He was resident theatre director of the Wilde Theatre in Bracknell (directing under the name Jack Holloway) and in July 2003 was creative director of Elemental, a large-scale theatre, music and spectacle event at Chalon dans la Rue festival in Chalon-sur-Saône, France. From 1997–2004 he set up and ran the National Theatre's events department on London's South Bank, where he was the founding artistic director