Am Dram, Community Theatre, or Just Plain Vanity

Having been involved in some sort of amateur theatre now for most of my adolescent and adult life, I have recently been deliberating on what to call what I and others do in the name of art.

I find it at once amusing and irritating that the term amateur dramatics has fallen so far from favour, and that am-dram has almost become a term of abuse to describe our worst excesses. At best it conjures up images of very hierarchical and exclusive clubs that require money and social status to join, with very large costume budgets (if not very large costumes) and decidely variable talent. At worst we remember sitting through excruciating renditions of Shakespeare and Shaw in the name of friendship, loyalty and family duty, only to lie with impunity after the event ("but darling, you were marvellous").

Of course none us actually involved in producing amateur theatre would ever recognise ourselves in that description. My own company espouses strongly the notion of theatre as a vehicle for social change, and while our revolutionary zeal may have been diluted since the days of the Spanish Civil War, we still hope that we are accepting of people regardless of their backgrounds, we don't make it too expensive for them to get involved, and you don't have to wait for one of the stalwarts to die before you can get a part in on of our plays.

There was a time that I used to describe what we do as community theatre, as if the notion of social responsibility validated what we do. But we are not social workers. We do it for fun. And when you try and emphasis how producing drama can build up social capital, community cohesion etc (in the vain hope of attracting grant aid, for example), well, it just sounds dull.

Then there are those who regard themselves as "semi-professional". This means that although they are untrained and have full time jobs in banks, supermarkets and self-regulating professions, it is only a matter of time before they are discovered by an agent or a talent scout, and their career rockets them to the West End, the RSC or the Big Brother House.

But is it not vanity to describe ourselves as something that we are not? And what is wrong, in the end, with being amateurs. It is only relatively recently, after all, that it was professionalism that was considered the term of abuse - at lease by the upper classes (perhaps we should call ourselves gentleman-dramatists).

But let us be amateurs, out and proud. And if it is vanity to expect people to pay to see our productions, so be it; because if you have to pretend to be the new Sam Mendes in order to be taken seriously, then you can count me out.