July 2017. There is soft rain falling on an open-air production of Twelfth Night in the atmospheric gardens of Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, in northeast England. The audience has come dressed for the weather, and hot pies will be served in the interval. This production of Twelfth Night, directed by Jill Cole, has a Victorian Steampunk theme, and the pre-show entertainment, aided by enthusiasts from the Teeside Steampunk Society, captures its playful mood. The play will begin in less than ten minutes, and anticipation is building. The company, The Castle Players , has a strong reputation for inventive and entertaining performances, which is strengthened by their collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) as part of the latter’s Open Stages Programme in which amateurs and professionals work together. Audiences for amateur companies are often sociable, even to people they have never met before, and I am quickly engaged in conversation by the couple sitting next to me. We look at the programme together and they tell me about people in the cast—one is a psychologist who works in the prison and another is a gardener. And Sir Andrew Aguecheek, they say, works in the sandwich shop. (Helen’s Research Diary, July 2017)

October 2014. People of all ages are laughing and greeting each other warmly as they congregate in a large multi-purpose venue on HMS Collingwood, a naval base in the south of England, to begin the first of their twice-weekly rehearsals for Dick Whittington. In mid-October people are already struggling to get tickets for the five performances that will run 4–7th December. This is a popular group with a local reputation for putting on a good panto. I’ve been welcomed to watch proceedings and have been guided through the rigmarole of security having previously submitted my personal details and car registration. I learn that every audience member has to do this too and reminded that this is an odd place to see a show. The surprises keep coming. In the middle of a car park there is a dedicated storage and making facility where a group of women are chatting and busy assembling props: a giant three-tiered wedding cake, a large chest full of sparkly jewels and rat noses made from black feathers. Robin Sheppard, who is playing the pantomime dame whilst his teenage daughter is in the chorus, is trying on a host of garish costumes. He tells me about his personal collection of high heels and we have a conversation about the best places to buy ‘big bras’! He is mischievous and makes a fabulous dame. (Nadine’s Research Diary, October 2014)

February 2015. I am standing amidst racks of ornate costumes in the chilly wardrobe upstairs in Sidmouth Amateur Dramatic Society’s purpose-built rehearsal space, as a small committee consults with director Gill Coley on casting the summer production, Steel Magnolias. During the evening auditions, different combinations of voices have offered glimpses of future comic performances, and Gill has gently guided work on the moment where M’Lynn talks of her daughter’s death, the room quietened as we experience the play’s emotional force. While the potential cast sips coffee expectantly downstairs, upstairs members pool their expertise to help Gill balance opportunities for individual performers against the needs of the play. They know Steel Magnolias will be popular with audiences, and that it needs the chemistry of a strong ensemble to do it justice and demonstrate SADS’s ambition and prowess. More than that they need a hairdresser, prepared to coach the cast for free programme publicity. (Jane’s Research Diary, February 2015)

Amateur theatre-makers are everywhere. Each week, year after year, people come together to make theatre. They rehearse in village halls, community centres, the backrooms of pubs, suburban sitting rooms, military bases and in beautiful atmospheric theatre-buildings owned and run by amateurs. Sheds and garages become workshops for set-building and prop-making, and bedrooms are crammed with half-finished costumes, rolls of fabric and boxes of ribbon. Memories are captured in old press cuttings and programmes stored in battered albums under beds and production photographs are proudly displayed in homes and on the walls of amateur theatres. Traces of amateur performances are archived in old shoe-boxes, productions replayed on scratched DVDs and the histories of amateur theatre companies carefully crafted into self-published books. Amateur theatre is part of the biographies of public buildings, integral to community-building and place-making, and central to the creative and cultural lives of those who, year after year, make theatre for the love of it.

Yet amateur theatre inhabits a paradoxical space. On the one hand, for its participants and audiences, amateur theatre is deeply enmeshed in life’s rhythms, shaping the pattern of each year and marking life’s changes as roles move from one generation to the next. For many communities, particularly those outside major cities and metropolitan centres, amateur theatre is simply the theatre, enabling audiences to discover new plays and enjoy old favourites, and to appreciate the liveness of theatre with the added delight of seeing familiar faces in different guises. On the other, amateur theatre is frequently unrecognised as part of the cultural ecology of contemporary theatre, largely invisible in the academy and, in professional theatre and popular culture, amateurs have been at best largely ignored and at worst derided. This book aims to open this paradox for critical scrutiny, to understand how the histories of amateur theatre illuminate the present, to analyse the contribution made by amateur theatre to the contemporary cultural economy and to shed light on its significance as a creative practice. The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre aims to address this form of cultural participation in its diversity and complexity, acknowledging its historical and social contingency.

So what is amateur theatre? Paying attention to amateur theatre reveals, of course, that it carries a multiplicity of meanings and includes a wide range of practices. The three snapshots with which we began the chapter hint at this spectrum; there is no one ‘amateur theatre’ any more than there is one professional theatre. The term ‘amateur theatre’ itself defies neat definition—for the purposes of our study we took it to refer to companies of people who make theatre in, with and for their local communities for love rather than money. Yet throughout our research we have found a porosity between different sectors, and the boundaries between the professional and amateur activity are rather more loosely drawn than is often understood. Professional musicians, choreographers, lighting technicians and electricians are regularly employed by amateurs, and playwrights, publishers and suppliers of stage lighting, costumes and sound equipment benefit from the amateur market. Some amateurs turn professional, but maintain links with the local amateur company that nurtured their talent. There is also a trend for professional theatre companies to invite unpaid ‘volunteers’ to join their productions, or to engage ‘community casts’ to widen access to the arts in which the authenticity of ‘real people’ on stage is valued as an aesthetic strategy (Holdsworth et al. 2017). Although we are alert to the iniquity of working practices where volunteers take the place of paid theatre workers, and recognise the opportunities offered to community casts by professional directors, our subject in this book is the work of amateur theatre companies, self-governing organisations whose primary focus is to make theatre. An amateur is very different from a volunteer; amateurs often sustain a life-long passion for their interest, whereas voluntary work suggests willing service, often to an organisation that is professionally managed. The distinction between head and heart is captured in the language; the word volunteer derives from the Latin voluntārius—of free will, whereas amateur famously stems from amātōr—to love.

This book takes place in the context of a contemporary amateur turn, and a renewed interest in the amateur in the twenty-first century. Reality TV shows have brought the amateur to public attention, with amateur bakers, amateur painters, amateur choirs, amateur potters, amateur dress-makers, amateur interior designers and many others displaying technical skill, creativity and passion for their craft in weekly competitions, often judged by leading professionals in their field. One such programme featured amateur theatre-makers; Sky Arts’ Stagestruck in 2011 followed the fortunes of eight amateur theatre companies who competed to perform on a stage in London’s West End. Nicolas Kent , the production company’s creative director, recognised the communitarianism associated with a...