English Stage Company, The

an organization established in 1955 at the Royal Court Theatre by George Devine (1910–66) and others. Its original aim was to encourage novelists and poets to write drama, and its first production was Angus Wilson's The Mulberry Bush, but its primary purpose soon became the discovery of socially critical work by young, and usually left-wing, playwrights. Indeed, its presentation of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in May 1956 is commonly regarded as the beginning of a British dramatic renaissance which the ESC continued to promote with productions of key work by Wesker, Arden, Bond, Jellicoe, Hampton, Hare, Brenton, Matura, Churchill, and others. According to the then artistic director of the Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clark, the main function of the ESC in 1991 was still to present work ‘urgently debating the nature of British society’.