Theatre Guild, The

Theatre Guild, The, was founded by former members of the Washington Square Players (1918). Originally a little‐theater group, it specialized in the production of contemporary work, producing most of Shaw's plays after Heartbreak House (1920), and O'Neill's plays after Marco Millions (1928). It also revived such plays as Jonson's Volpone. Shrewdness in play selection, skill in production, and ability in financial management permitted the Guild to build its own million‐dollar theater (1925) and thus take itself outside the scope of the movement into conventional commercial production. The theater was sold in 1944. Over the years the Guild mounted fewer and fewer plays of its own, turning into a subscription and tour‐booking agency in association with the American Theatre Society. The Group Theatre was an outgrowth (1931–41) of the Guild.