Women Leaders and Theatre at the Chocolate Factory

Cadbury’s remains a leading global British heritage brand. Founded in the early nineteenth century, the cocoa and chocolate manufacturer was steered by the tenets of Quaker capitalism; key parts of this being strong focus on employee education, recreation, and wellbeing, and the presence and promotion of women within the firm’s governance, policies, finances, and day-to-day business. Delivering staff recreation and education depended on the firm’s senior leaders, many of whom were women. What may seem incongruous, but is nonetheless true of this Quaker business, is that theatre - an astonishing amount of theatre – was integral to these schemes. During the first decades of the twentieth century Cadbury’s factory headquarters in Bournville, Birmingham, was the site of stage performances that embodied and promoted ideas around social reform, creativity, and progressive industrial and people management practices. This essay will focus on three senior, women leaders at Cadbury’s who produced, designed, and performed this factory theatre, offering a new way to think about women, theatre, and leadership outside of the theatre industry; theatre that took place in a professional, working context but that did not fit within the worlds of either professional or amateur theatre.