Ecologies of Amateur Theatre

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)

• 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.