In the UK the term community theatre does not mean the form of theater for which the term is used in the USA, which is usually referred to as 'amateur', where non-professional performers put on productions for fun. Instead it refers to professional theatre work, taking place in non-theatre settings within specific communities. Much of this work has tended to be issue-based.
Alongside this kind of work there is also the concept of the Community Play, pioneered by Ann Jellicoe. Here there are no auditions as such, all the people who turn up can take part in the productions, at the discretion of the director or directors. Although paid professionals may take leading roles, amateurs do too. Because of the lack of clearing with the numbers in these productions, they tend to lean towards huge productions.
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or theatre:
“When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 17:14,15.
“Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.”
—Dame Alice Markova (b. 1910)