Exchange Talk: Art, Time and Place - Anselm Heinrich

ENSA, The Entertainments Service Association which entertained the armed forces in war-time Britian has been both forgotten and belittled. Dr Heinrich offers a reassessment of ENSA as in fact operating counter to capitalist theatre principles, creating a truly National Theatre even if not by design.

The Entertainments Services Association (ENSA) was the British war-time organisation which provided entertainment for the armed forces. At the end of the war it had organised tens of thousands of shows, had employed thousands of artists and had entertained hundreds of thousands of people. Yet since then ENSA has been almost forgotten and largely written out of the established histories of the war. If mentioned at all ENSA has been ridiculed and belittled, and criticised for the poor quality of its shows, its belligerent director and the financial support it received. In 1945 ENSA was accused of mismanagement, its funding was withdrawn, and the grand victory parade in London took place without ENSA involvement.

In this talk I offer a reassessment of the organisation as one that was in fact groundbreaking and revolutionary. The fact that ENSA provided employment when this was hard to come by and paid everyone the same basic salary, that it did away with fancy costumes and expensive designs, and produced simple, cheap and versatile sets, ran counter to some of the underlying principles of a capitalist theatre industry. ENSA also represented an enterprise that attempted to bridge gaps between ‘high’ and ‘low’ entertainment. Although this did not happen by design it arguably created – perhaps for the first time ever and since – a truly National Theatre at Dury Lane.

Dr Anselm Heinrich is a cultural historian and Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. His book publications include Theatre and Europe under German Occupation (Routledge, 2017) and Entertainment, Education, Propaganda. Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain Between 1918 and 1945 (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2007). He has co-edited collections of essays on Ruskin, The Theatre, and Victorian Visual Culture with Kate Newey and Jeffrey Richards (2009), and on Dramaturgies of War with Ann-Christine Simke (2023, both for Palgrave). His monograph on Theatre in Britain During WWII will be out with Oxford University Press in 2026. Anselm has published articles in leading international journals, including Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly and Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, and has held research fellowships at Oxford, Marburg and Harvard. Other research interests include contemporary German theatre and performance, dramaturgy, popular performance practices, and cultural policy. Anselm is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and co-editor of Theatre Notebook.

University of Glasgow – School of Culture & Creative Arts | Dr Anselm Heinrich