Annie's first venture into the theatre was in 1894 was made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supported her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Avenue Theatre, London. This included a new play by Yeats, "The Land of Heart's Desire", and the première of George Bernard Shaw's play "Arms and the Man". In 1903 Yeats persuaded her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovered her skill as a theatre administrator. She bought a property and developed it into the Abbey Theatre, which opened in December 1904. Although she moved back to live in England she continued to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she had purchased and renovated the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and developed it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.