This book is the first major study of amateur theatre, offering new perspectives on its place in the cultural and social life of communities. Historically informed, it traces how amateur theatre has impacted national repertoires, contributed to diverse creative economies, and responded to changing patterns of labour. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research, it traces the importance of amateur theatre to crafting places and the ways in which it sustains the creativity of amateur theatre over a lifetime. It asks: how does amateur theatre-making contribute to the twenty-first century amateur turn?
This book is the first major study of amateur theatre, offering new perspectives on its place in the cultural and social life of communities. Historically informed, it traces how amateur theatre has impacted national repertoires, contributed to diverse creative economies, and responded to changing patterns of labour. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research, it traces the importance of amateur theatre to crafting places and the ways in which it sustains the creativity of amateur theatre over a lifetime. It asks: how does amateur theatre-making contribute to the twenty-first century amateur turn?
1. Ecologies of Amateur Theatre.- 2. Valuing Amateur Theatre.- 3. Amateur Repertoires.- 4. Amateur Theatre,Place and Place-Making.- 5. Making Time for Amateur Theatre: Work, Labour and Free Time.- 6. Making Amateur Theatre.- 7. Amateur Theatre: Heritage and Invented Traditions.- 8. Theatre and the Amateur Turn: Future Ecologies.
Helen Nicholson is Professor of Theatre and Performance at
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her books include Applied
Drama: The Gift of Theatre (2005/2014), Theatre, Education and
Performance (2011), and co-edited collections Performance and
Participation (2017) and Critical Perspectives on Applied Theatre
(2016). With Nadine Holdsworth and Jane Milling as
Co-Investigators, she was Principal Investigator on two research
projects on amateur theatre, funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council.
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance
Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has written Joan
Littlewood’s Theatre (2011), Theatre & Nation (2010) and Joan
Littlewood (2006), edited Theatre and National Identity (2014), and
co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on amateur
theatre (2017).
Jane Milling is Associate Professor of Drama at the
University of Exeter, UK. She has co-authored Devising Performance
(2005/2015), Modern British Playwrighting: the 1980s (2012), and
co-edited The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Volume 1 (2004)
and Extraordinary Actors (2004).
“This study is a hugely satisfying read, both critical and timely … . The book is both theoretically rich and immensely readable, and it will, I am sure, be a spur to many to take up its challenge; to not only pay more attention to the histories and present practices of amateur theatre, but to begin to look critically at the value hierarchies that dominate the theatre studies discipline more widely as a consequence.” (Liz Tomlin, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, Vol. 8 (2), 2020)
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