(Niton Drama Group in 1983 - a cast of 10 on a 15 foot wide stage!)
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
When I talk about my “Am-Dram” hobby, many of my friends smile wryly and ask kindly – “if we’re free, we will try and come along to support you”!
Amateur theatre can often summon up images of a dusty village hall, a handful of people in second-hand costumes, forgotten lines and a wobbly cobbled together set!
In every town and many villages across the UK, you will find a local amateur dramatic group, often with less than 30 members and usually performing at least two play or musical productions each year. They manage to borrow, beg or create costumes, spend many hours, building sets and props, spend many weeks rehearsing lines and movement, pull together their own publicity, sell their own tickets & serve tea and coffee by the gallon.
Due to license fees, most of these groups can’t afford to stage a modern play or musical, and their programmes can consist of somewhat dated material, and of course there is the perennial challenge of casting a play which calls for the main characters to be young, from their membership, where the average age might be 50+!
I have been involved with many different amateur theatre groups over the past 50 years. Whilst some have aspired to put on ‘professional’ productions in larger theatres with polish & style, others have had just as much fun, entertaining a local village community; and that’s how it should be. Amateur theatre is a hobby – just like other hobbies; Art, home baking, gardening, or sport. We all aspire to get better at our hobby, but at the end of the day – its about enjoying the company of like-minded people, its about enjoying the rehearsals, the building of the sets, (wobbly or not) and, yes, its also about knowing that your friends will sometimes come along and ‘support’ you, not necessarily because they think the production will be good, but because they want to share in the pleasure you get from your hobby, just as you would do for them.
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