Maddermarket Theatre Built in 1794 as a Roman Catholic chapel, the theatre was purchased in 1921 by William Nugent Blight Monck CBE and converted into the home of the Guild of Norwich Players. It was the first permanent recreation of an Elizabethan Theatre. The Guild became the Maddermarket Theatre Company in 1993. In 1940 George Bernard Shaw wrote to Monck: "There is nothing in British theatrical history more extraordinary than your creation of the Maddermarket Theatre..."