For the majority of the 1940s Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies lived and worked in South Africa, creating and touring productions. A distinguishing factor of her time in South Africa is that for the only time in her long working life, she was director and producer of her own company. The significance of her work during this period can be understood both in terms of its reception and influence in the South African cultural context and through an assessment of its impact on Ffrangcon-Davies's career, in its own time and in retrospect. The socio-political and cultural contextual differences are complex, although parallels do emerge between wartime Britain and South Africa. This period of Ffrangcon-Davies's working life removed her geographically from the dominant narrative that describes the onset of the Second World War bringing turmoil to the British theatre establishment. The narrative of performance in Britain during wartime involves the intrepid actor, epitomized by Donald Wolfit, giving lunchtime performances of Shakespeare's patriotic edited highlights in bomb-damaged theatres to bring inspiration to the country's war-weary citizens. That theatre in Britain during the Second World War thrived was largely due to financial subsidies provided by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA, precursor to the Arts Council). Launched in 1939, CEMA funded entertainments for both troops and citizens at home and abroad, including UK tours such as Macbeth (1942), for which Ffrangcon-Davies returned from South Africa to partner John Gielgud.