 In 1912, two theatre groups were formed, the Toy Theatre in Boston and the Chicago Little Theatre, these events often being cited as the official start of the Little Theatre Movement in the United States.Continuing to react against commercialism, amateur companies began to write and produce their own works as well as new plays from Europe that had been ignored by the syndicates.A wide variety of experimental groups, clubs, and settlement houses undertook to reform the theater, bringing more inwardly directed plays to a wider public audience.