Valuing Amateur Theatre

This chapter analyses the shifting cultural value of amateur theatre over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Amateur theatre is a mode of cultural production that operates outside the late-twentieth century rise of the creative and cultural industries and independently from the criteria set for public subsidy. The chapter explores the appearance of the amateur theatre movement at the beginning of the twentieth century and examines the fundamental role that amateur theatre played over the century in the evolution of English regional theatres, adult drama education, the establishment of the National Theatre and the case for public subsidy for theatre. The chapter concludes by considering the role that the contemporary amateur theatre organisations are being asked to play in today’s cultural ecology.