Rib Davis’ involvement in community theatre began in the mid-’70s, when he was Musical Director for Roy Nevitt’s All Change at Stantonbury, Milton Keynes. Since then he has written 15 large-scale community plays, most of them documentary dramas closely based upon oral history, and most of them directed by himself. It is for this style of theatre that Rib Davis is perhaps best known.

The subject matter of these plays has varied hugely, from Midlands pit village life in the inter-war years (Every Other Garden ’Ad A Pit was commissioned for the D.H.Lawrence centenary festival) to the steelworks in Corby to the transformation of a village into a commuter town in Cherry Hinton. In Cambridge Davis focused on railway workers, in Bletchley the coming of the new town and in High Wycombe the Home Front. The venues have varied from community halls to a marquee to a village green to a (1990s) rave venue. These plays have all called for sustained community commitment, each with a huge cast and performance/ production crew of people of all ages and from all backgrounds. His most recent community play has been been The Vision which he wrote and directed for Woking Community Play Association.