Mary Kelly (playwright)

Mary Elfreda Kelly OBE (25 March 1888 – 5 November 1951) was a British playwright, pageant maker and founder of the Village Drama Society in 1919.

These changes included the reduced power and wealth of the gentry, the waning of the influence of the church, the growth of the Women's Institutes (WI) improved education, the advent of radio and cinema, better bus services, and awareness of health and housing.

With the writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch as the Society's first president Kelly set up a costume supply and plays for villages to use.

[3] The Village Drama Society moved its headquarters from Kelly House to Camberwell in London in 1924.

[8] Other pageants followed at Rillington (1927), Bradstone (1929), Launceston (1931), Bude, and Exeter Cathedral ('The Pitifull Queene', 1932).

[1] Her play The Mother was a described as "a sharply class-conscious two act drama that parallels the death of a young child with the futile losses of war".