Our Story
The Royal Court is the writers' theatre.
We are the leading force for championing and cultivating playwrights. Our stages create space for dissonance, dissent and innovation, empowering new and diverse voices to drive forward our national culture and public conversation.
Founded in 1956, our history is defined by taking risks on our stages, often ahead of public taste and opinion – inspiring audiences, artists and communities with new thinking and unimagined approaches, changing the artform forever.
The Royal Court’s unique purpose as a national institution is to define the future of theatre, challenging the past and provoking the present. We welcome contrast and contradiction: an essential cultural establishment, driven by new and divergent ideas.
We are nothing less than the centre of new theatre, at home and around the globe: vital to how we understand one another and the changing world around us.
About the Royal Court Theatre
Our Artistic Values
Freedom
Platforming controversial views, mess and uncertainty, ahead of public and peer consensus.
Innovation
Encouraging experimentation and risk, and protecting artists’ right to fail.
Dissonance
Finding strength in contradiction and contrast, from our establishment name to sharing our stages with incendiary work and conflicting voices.
Ambition
Rigorously and abundantly supporting big imaginations and bold artistic visions, acting as the antidote to a wider culture of creative austerity.
Our History
'The most important theatre in Europe’ — New York Times
The Royal Court in its present form dates back to 1956, when the English Stage Company purchased the lease on the building.
Our founding artistic director, George Devine, aimed to discover ‘hard-hitting, uncompromising writers’. In January 1956, he took out a newspaper advert calling for scripts. He received over 700 submissions, of which the stand-out was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. Premiered that year, initially to (mostly) poor reviews, it is now recognised as a classic and a play that marks the beginning of modern British drama.
During the 1960s, the Court was on the forefront of issues around censorship in British society. Premiere productions of controversial plays by both John Osborne and Edward Bond necessitated the theatre turning itself into a 'private members club' to circumvent the Lord Chamberlain, and ultimately contributed to the abolition of formal theatre censorship in the UK.
The commitments to open submissions, that anyone can send us a play for consideration and programming; and to artistic freedom, presenting challenging works ‘ahead of public taste’, remain hallmarks of the Court’s mission.
‘The undisputed epicentre of new writing in this country’ — Time Out
In 1969, the Royal Court opened the Theatre Upstairs, one of the first black box studios at a mainstream theatre. Early productions included The Rocky Horror Show by Richard O’ Brien and Owners by unknown writer Caryl Churchill, who went on to write 17 plays for the Court.
The Young People’s Theatre was set up in 1966, encouraging writers from all sections of society to find their voice. This led to the first Young Writers Festival in 1973, a regular event for over 20 years - a legacy now continued in our national Young Playwrights Award.
The following decades expanded the Royal Court’s reputation, launching writers including Peter Gill, Athol Fugard, Arnold Wesker, Barry Reckford, Howard Brenton, David Hare, Joe Orton, Wole Soyinka, David Edgar, Sam Shepard, Andrea Dunbar, Hanif Kureishi, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Sarah Kane, Roy Williams, Jez Butterworth, Winsome Pinnock, Martin McDonagh, Mark Ravenhill and debbie tucker green.
Plays from the Royal Court’s history such as Saved by Edward Bond, Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth are now all regularly produced nationally and internationally.
‘It’s hard not to rave about the Royal Court’ — The Guardian
In 1996, supported by the National Lottery, the Royal Court secured funding for a major capital project, ultimately costing over £20m. The theatre re-opened in February 2000 with vastly improved artist and audience facilities: a confident, renewed powerhouse, still committed to its founding ideals.
Today, writers, directors, actors and audiences look to the Royal Court for the classics of the future. That includes plays like Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant – winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2025 before a sold out West End run – as well as plays that were once considered subversive, immoral or blasphemous and which are now studied in schools and performed all over the world.
George Devine wanted to create a ‘vital, modern theatre of experiment’. 70 years on, the theatre stands at the centre of a vigorous, renewed culture of playwriting.
‘The most stylish, welcoming & imaginatively designed theatre in town’ — The Telegraph
Artistic Directors
2024 to present:
David Byrne
2013 – 2023:
Vicky Featherstone
2007 – 2013:
Dominic Cooke
1998 – 2006:
Ian Rickson
1992 – 1998:
Stephen Daldry
1979 – 1992:
Max Stafford-Clark
1977 – 1979:
Stuart Burge
1975 – 1977:
Robert Kidd & Nicholas Wright
1972 – 1975:
Oscar Lewenstein
1969 – 1972:
William Gaskill, Lindsay Anderson & Anthony Page
1965 – 1969:
William Gaskill
1956 – 1965:
George Devine
