Amateur Theatre: Motivations, Practice and Community

Researcher: Emily Dunford
Supervised by: Nadine Holdsworth
Home department: English and Comparative Literary Studies
Project department: Theatre and Performance Studies
Expected start date: 06/06/2016
Expected end date: 01/08/2016

Emily is an English and Theatre Studies finalist, based in North Shropshire. She has always been involved in amateur performance, whether acting or behind the scenes. Her interest in amateur theatre and community stemmed from this involvement, alongside studying rurality over the course of her degree. She hopes to continue along this line of study during her MA in 2016-17. Outside of the arts, Emily's other interests include cookery and politics, and she is a representative of Warwick SU.

In the 21st century, the cult of the amateur has become increasingly more apparent across a range of cultural forms. From the Great British Bake Off (searching for the nation's best amateur baker), to Britain's Got Talent, to the recent Royal Shakespeare Company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which employed several amateur theatre troupes as the rude mechanicals, the prominence of the amateur in relation to the professional is ever increasing. This project explores the motivations behind peoples' involvement in amateur theatre and asks what participation in amateur theatre means on an individual and community level. Here, I use primary research in the form of interviews, repertoire analysis, archival material, company histories and audience surveys, focusing on a small number of companies in the rural North Shropshire region. In examining these primary sources in relation to the primary themes of heritage, craft and community, the findings will be used to explore the role of amateur theatre past and present in this locality. The study has been formulated to contribute to an on-going AHRC-funded research project into amateur theatre (see http://amateurdramaresearch.com/).