14 Act lll Scene lll - Getting Out

LINDA HORNZEE-JONES 2001 220

ACT III SCENE III - GETTING OUT

Through the eighty years of Amdram‟s current run the concerns of the „How To Do It‟

books described under Methodology have been to advise amateurs how to „get in‟.

„Getting in‟ covers everything from how to form a group, choose a script, cast it, find a

venue, construct the mise en scène, rehearse the play, and bring everything together on

opening night. From the generalised instructional volumes edited by Harold Downs in

1934 to the later monographs by Meville (1963), Hepworth (1978), and Geoff Morris

Michell in 1996, little mention is made of the processes and etiquette of „getting out‟.

Even Michael Green is silent on the comic value of the subject. „Getting out‟ involves

leaving the venue as quickly as possible, removing everything you brought with you and

returning it to the places from whence it came. It is sometimes called „striking‟, from

„striking the set‟ which means to dismantle the scenery of the current scene, but complex

plays with a series of sets will have them „struck‟ and rebuilt every night. There is more

to getting out than just striking the set. Getting out is the total removal from the venue.

In common with the way I have used other familiar theatrical terms in this thesis,

when I later capitalise the term as Getting Out, you will know that I have found a wider

application for the notion. Just for now I am concerned with a lower case getting out.

Getting out is another opportunity for masochistic group bonding. The stars of the

commercial theatre are not expected to turn up at the stage doors of the Royal Court or

the National on the morning after the production‟s closing night to help sort costumes

and wash down flats. Indeed, the morning after the curtain has come down for the last

time is likely to find professional actors anywhere else except back at the theatre.

Amateur actors who have been in the production are expected to turn up to help

with getting out, and it is bad etiquette to fail to show, no matter how hung over you are

after last night‟s party. All Domestic phase, Owner-occupier, and In-houser groups, (and

some Itinerant groups), have the luxury of leaving getting out totally until the next day.

Their afterplay parties often take place in the performance space among the debris of the

mise en scène. It is more usual for Itinerant groups (and of course all drama festival

entries) to have to get out of their venue and totally remove scenery, costumes and

technical equipment to a place of safety immediately after the final curtain call on

closing night and before the afterplay party can even begin.


I have been in Itinerant productions where the logistics of striking the set and the

physical removal of everything to a member‟s barn or garage has taken so many hours

that the afterplay party did not start until well after midnight. Even this scramble to

vacate the premises is only a halfway house to the full business of getting out, and

participants will return later to their place of safety to dismantle, sort, retrieve and

redistribute from their mise en scène for future recycling in other productions.

I‟VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO ON A SUNDAY MORNING

George! I know you‟ve got a hangover, but you‟re spraying the potted palm. You‟ll kill it.

If you‟ve forgotten how to hose-down a flat properly I‟ll get young Sam to do it. … Jim,

that brace with the blue gaffer on it lives behind the door of the outside loo with the six

yellow weights. … Don‟t bring those gobbos out here children, if they get water sprayed on

them they‟ll be useless. Leave them on the props table…. That red chair came from Bert‟s

office. Leave it in the bar for him. …Sue, how did Lady Clarissa get her aunt‟s potted palm

down here? It‟s so tall. In her pony and trap? Oh, dear! …Lesley, your gobbos are on the

props table. Oh, you found them in the kitchen sink? OK …That wig is ours – lives in the

green trunk. That wig‟s Sophie‟s. Sophie, here‟s your wig! That wig‟s hired – I‟ll take it

back Monday. …Have you finished that flat? Sam, help George get the potted palm on his

trailer. Where‟s it going? The Dower House. What do you mean “he won‟t go anywhere

near that old bat”? I know she can be a bit abusive, dear – it‟s her age. Oh, no! Now he‟s

dropped it! Get it back in its pot Sam, it‟s only a little bent… Don‟t put that fur coat away

in Wardrobe, it‟s mine. Well, actually it‟s Mother‟s. Does anyone know if Cremine will get

panstick off mink? …See Sue about washing those tights. Don‟t throw the holy pair away –

we might do Cinderella. …. Scripts to the library cupboard please… Will someone Hoover

the crisps off the foyer carpet so we can get the bar open? … Hello Dawn, thank you for

turning up to help, really, it‟s nearly all done - but I‟ve got just the job for you. If we open

the sunroof in your Volvo, could you run this potted palm up to the Dower House?

Note there is a pain-in-the-neck Precious Prop in there, providing the usual time-

and-people-consuming masochistic pleasures that Precious Props are required to fulfil.

The recycling of Lady Clarissa‟s aunt‟s potted palm occupies a disproportionate amount

of everyone‟s time, energy, and emotional investment.


This amateur recycling of materials reflects the philosophy of protestant thrift that

distinguishes amateurs from theatre professionals. Where the professional theatre

consumes, the amateur theatre recycles. When a professional production ends its run the

set, costumes, and the contents of the mise en scène are usually totally disposed of by the

production company. Some costumes and props may have been hired and are returned to

the hire firms, but much of the set is more likely to be literally taken by truck to be

dumped at a local authority run tip (or elsewhere). One small group I am associated with

is still reusing flats, rostra, and balustrades „dumped‟ on them by a friendly West End

theatre stage manager supposedly en route to a tip some fifteen years ago.

Sometimes the complete mise en scène of a commercial production is sold or hired

to the first amateur group to obtain the amateur performing rights, particularly if it

incorporates machinery or effects essential to the plot. Most recently I have seen the

professional sets, costumes, and props of both Kay Mellor‟s A Passionate Woman and

Terry Johnson‟s Dead Funny being recycled by amateur groups in the Surrey quadrant.

From thence these may go on to circulate by hire or purchase through a string of amateur

groups, often being progressively trimmed to fit smaller amateur stages. The working

model plants for Ashman & Menkel‟s Little Shop of Horrors circulate by hire in this way

and are advertised regularly in Amateur Stage magazine. Hiring firms will post colour

photocopies of photographs to amateurs of generic backdrops - originally painted for a

variety of commercial productions - for them to make a selection. A request to Stagesets

London, a hire firm based in SE10, for a backdrop to represent „Paris‟ may bring you

half a dozen views that once graced the West End stage in Gigi, together with a picture

of cloth number F580 described as depicting a “French Street café – C> Cut Door –

Revue Style”. Or try accessing A+M Hire Ltd of NW10 on www.amhire.com for colour

pictures of their 1,000,000 (yes, one million) stock components of mise en scène, copies

of which can be e-mailed to you, right now.

This recycling strategy serves to further reinforce both Amdram‟s stylistic copying

of outmoded professional styles and the public perception that Amdram is just a poor

copy of the professional stage. In fact, stylistically Amdram is „pickled‟ in late-

nineteenth century solidly constructed realistic naturalism. The amateur drama audience

currently expects to see elaborate box sets, real or realistically painted three-dimensional

detailing, and solid historically correct furniture.

http://www.amhire.com/


Failure to provide a „realistic‟ box set will lead to the production being branded

„amateur‟, and to the audience reporting it has not had its moneys-worth. Any amateur

group which aims for just clever lighting effects on a virtually bare stage, or other similar

inexpensive modern innovations, will incur the displeasure of their Expert Audience.

THE EXPERT AUDIENCE VOTES – WITH ITS FEET

Box office returns for the season just past seem to show that our audiences largely liked

what we offered but with some interesting variations. The pantomime and the Ayckbourn

were not surprisingly, 100% sell-outs. Not withstanding the usual popularity of

Shakespeare with Chapel audiences, our modern-dress, minimalist Hamlet had a disastrous

run to houses averaging only 60%, which actually tailed off towards the end of the week.

Luckily this production was so economical to stage, as it made great use of experimental

lighting and our standard rostra repainted in shades of grey, that our losses were not great.

Comments on the post-season survey forms filled in by season-ticket holders suggested that

a proper box set and period costumes were considered more appropriate for Shakespeare.

Extract from the Chairman‟s Report - AGM - Cuckoo Players

In addition, the Expert Audience expects to view this „pickled‟ artform in what it

regards as the right setting - a „little‟ miniature theatre imitating as closely as possible the

commercial performances spaces of the late nineteenth century - raked seating, plush

velvet, gilt details, fly tower, and a proscenium arch with „proper‟ curtains. In the final

analysis this perceived but socially constructed need to copy the now largely superseded

physical attributes of commercial theatre might be one factor in Amdram‟s Getting Out

of its current venues. Pursuit of the ownership of the „correct‟ trappings of theatre

buildings, electrical gadgetry, and realistic scenery is leading amateurs into problems

regarding maintenance and safety regulations which they are not financially or physically

able to service. In order to cover maintenance bills, or simply to fulfil obligations

imposed by funding bodies, the managements of amateur theatres are increasingly forced

into turning their buildings into commercial receiving houses, in which the previously

resident amateur group becomes just another customer occasionally renting space.

In the season of 1995-1996, the Crescent Theatre Birmingham put on ten in-house,

totally amateur, productions. Birmingham City Council‟s sale of the old theatre site for

£2.8 million, plus an almost equal amount from the National Lottery, financed the

rebuilding of the Crescent on a new site some 200 metres away, completed in 1999.

The financial package requires that the new theatre must open for 300 days in every year.

To fulfil this quota it is necessary to lease to commercial companies for £2000 per week,

and to employ full-time and part-time administration and bar staff (LTG Yearbooks).


This is no longer an amateur theatre satisfying the desires of amateurs, free to

pursue their hobby when they wish, or free not to pursue it if they choose not to. They

now have a sadomasochistic economic obligation to perform to order, which may prove

to be a burden to sustain in conjunction with their day-jobs. Their experience of the

pitfalls of the Adult control which is a by-product of funding is being repeated nation-

wide by other amateur groups who have accepted Adult Authority financial help. Groups

who have been „lucky‟ enough to „win‟ their Lottery bids are finding that in order to

fulfil the obligations of running their new improved theatres they have lost something of

the essential purposes of Amdram. In the light of their experiences, other groups who fail

to attract Lottery funding are expressing relief that this now allows the group to continue

with autonomy of purpose and administration. David Franks, then Chair of the Chipstead

Players at the Courtyard Theatre, described at the 1998 AGM how his initial feeling of

disappointment had turned to relief following the failure of their funding application.

I regret to say that our application for Lottery funding has proved unsuccessful.

Whilst this is disappointing and leaves us with a number of problems to be resolved,

it does mean that we are free to plan our future without having to accept the

constraints (or challenges as we were calling them a few weeks ago!) that accepting

Lottery funding would have imposed.

(David Franks, Noises Off, April 1998)

I see a strong indication that, while in its early stages, a split is now developing in

amateur drama in the United Kingdom between the grant-aided „winners‟ and what may

be perceived as the grant „losers‟. I say winner and losers with qualification because

unfortunately the indications are that it is the grant-aided groups who may actually be the

losers. Little Theatres that have had a Lottery makeover find they are forced to run them

as businesses, including the necessity of turning themselves into limited companies like

the Nomad Players Ltd of East Horsley and the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre Ltd of

Crayford. „Semi-professionalised‟ groups like these increasingly find the need to employ

theatre professionals with experience of managing a commercial theatre, running its box

office, handling the publicity, staffing the bar or even doing the lighting. These fun „jobs‟

that once attracted non-actors and Pastimers are being lost to the amateur membership.

The aims of Lottery funding are supposedly to increase participation in, and to open out

accessibility to, the buildings which house amateur theatre, but in fact this semi-

professionalisation is closing down the scope of the activity for those who invented it.


The National Lottery and Regional Arts Boards are not the only funding sources to

bring a controlling bureaucracy into a spontaneous activity. Hutchison & Feist (1991:92-

98) note that when any U.K. Local Authority makes a large grant to any amateur group a

usual perquisite of the grant is agreement to some professional input and supervision,

thus drawing amateurs and their venues into the semi-professional net. Funded groups

find themselves incorporated in Local Authority Arts Plans, and in civic-funded publicity

as part of the „cultural industries‟ of their Borough or city, while unfunded groups and

their performance venues remain more clearly located as „voluntary‟ (and invisible).

The Dyos report, Cultural Industries Strategy for Croydon 1998-2008, merely

mentions in passing “the 150 amateur groups based throughout Croydon, predominately

in the performing arts” (Dyos L. 1998:9). While deeming only eight halls and theatres in

the Borough as being commercially hireable, Dyos fails to mention most of the 23

amateur performance venues, identified by the 1994 Croydon Arts Plan, which generate

significant supporting income for their owners (schools, churches, and community

centres) and for the amateur groups using them. Even the Amateur Theatre Yearbooks

(Vance 1993 & 1997) name only one venue in Croydon – the Ashcroft Theatre, a

commercial receiving house now financially beyond the reach of most local Amdram

groups, including after 1996 the Second Round of the All England Theatre Festival.

In contrast the adjoining Borough of Reigate and Banstead is more aware of local

amateurs and their venues (Harris & Moore 1997), supporting amateur drama groups and

all its other varied amateur arts organisations by distributing minor aid when needed via

a voluntary Arts Council on a scale that does not threaten groups‟ voluntary status.

Reigate and Banstead also provides an more affordable major venue in the Harlequin,

Redhill, staging the Final of the All England Theatre Festival in June 1998.

An issue more threatening to the amateur status of Owner-occupiers is the recent

trend towards abnegating the group‟s responsibility for training its juniors by renting out

the premises to a professional Stage School. The Miller Centre, Caterham, and The

Courtyard at Chipstead recently went down this road with the Helen O'Grady Drama

Academy. Parents now pay heavily for training once provided cheaply by volunteers.

There is then a drift into the professional evident among amateur Owner-occupier

groups. As a further development, I have recently noted itinerant groups in the Surrey

Sector who effectively subvert the amateur/professional divide in new ways.


The Exit Stage Left Theatre Company describes itself as a “community „fringe‟

theatre company‟ providing „quality, affordable, live theatre for the people of Croydon”

(Exit Stage Left 1998). Based in the Council-run Shoestring Youth Theatre they are

sponsored and subsidised by the Borough Arts Department, the Guardian Newspaper

group, and the Co-op Wholesale Society. Pitching their public relations image at a

working-class audience, their programmes include adverts for a second hand furniture

shop and for Karaoke nights at inner suburban public houses. Yet neither their scripts

(Golden Pathway Annual, Shakers, Wyrd Sisters, Season‟s Greetings), their local

itinerant venues, nor their ticket prices, differ greatly from those of the unsubsidised,

lower middle class, outer suburban, Amdram groups in the Borough of Croydon.

Shakespeare 4 Kidz present Shakespeare rewritten and simplified for children.

Founded by two couples and run in conjunction with their day-jobs, which include

stockbroking and teaching, they „work-up‟ their scripts through class-work and out-of

school drama workshops with their pupils, and with local amateur groups. The company

hires receiving houses, employs actors and crew, and is profit making. One husband has

now given up stockbroking to run Shakespeare 4 Kidz as a day-job, but the company still

draws heavily on its amateur and school hinterland to develop new projects.

In addition to groups like these, I know many individuals who teach part-time for

Stage Schools or who are paid to teach the juniors of local groups. They do this while

holding down an often unrelated full-time or part-time day-job, and while also contriving

to be active members of more than one local Little Theatre and/or other amateur groups.

Are all these people amateurs or professionals? The dividing lines are blurring.

What Game are these people playing? The impression I receive is that drama participants

like these are able to happily jump a little further in either direction and either become

wholly professional for a time or revert totally to amateur involvement, depending on the

time of year, or the work available, or in the event of the Strokes they receive becoming

unsatisfactory. On these grounds alone I would categorise them as amateurs playing the

amateur Preferred Game, while they may think of themselves as drama professionals.

As the line blurs between amateur and professional theatre groups, so too does the

line between what are acceptable scripts for amateurs and scripts that are perceived by

funded groups as more „modern‟, mainstream and professional, and therefore more

suitable for the supposedly diversified audiences at their newly professionalised venue.


There is no dispute that some Little Theatres find themselves in difficulties due to

falling box office receipts. Many groups mention this problem in their entries in recent

Little Theatre Guild‟s Yearbooks and speculate in LTG Newsletters that older audiences

are driven away by „distasteful‟ modern plays containing bad language and „social

realism‟ (LTG Newsletter Nov 96:7-8). I have observed that plays containing „realistic‟

or sexually explicit language (for example Ariel Dorfman‟s Death and the Maiden 1991)

will do badly at the amateur box office. When I have quizzed Pastimer group members

who are otherwise regular audience, as to why they missed this or that particular

production, all cite a distaste of offensive language in mixed-gender company as their

principal reason. Here is the point at which amateur drama draws the middle class moral

line between the pleasures received from imitating the behaviour of other classes. That it

is OK to behave badly, as long as you speak nicely while doing it, is imbedded in the

Amdram code of self-improvement. Michael Shipley reviews the debate on „unsuitable‟

plays circulating among LTG member theatres‟ newsletters.

Within the provincial world of amateur theatre, modern drama, and that would

seem to include most plays written within the last 60 years with any pretension to

social realism, would seem to be giving our average audience a kind of „shock

treatment‟ they don‟t like to receive. ……. The argument usually is that audiences

are driven away from future good plays because they are upset by „distasteful‟

plays, usually one recent play they have experienced; while on the other hand, the

active membership of a theatre group presses to be stretched by new and challenging

work, finding traditional safe plays somewhat restricting in their predictability.

(Michael Shipley, LTG Newsletter Nov. 1996:7)

In The Afterplay Party I explored the subject of the widening demographic gap

created by the Lost Generation, and touched on the fact that Amdram audiences also

appear to be ageing. The reaction from audiences to „unsuitable‟ texts contributes to

making plays in the Amdram canon more and more difficult to cast, particularly those

parts normally played by members in the Lost Generation age group, which increasingly

have to be played by older members. In the South London Theatre‟s 1997 Midsummer

Night‟s Dream, Oberon, Titania, and Puck were all drawing Senior Citizen Bus Passes.

In a reflexive loop, this ageing–up of casts is in turn partly responsible for the observably

ageing audience. With the competition of racier fare on cinema and TV, twenty and

thirty-somethings are not attracted to see a live play unless their friends are in the cast,

and it is the twenty and thirty-somethings that are Amdram‟s Lost Generation.


The „Lost Generation‟ of actively masochistic Bs and C1‟s has been „trained out‟

of the Amdram text-driven mindset that requires the Player to masochistically „get it

right‟. Both Drama Training and DIE follow very different Games from the family

generated Preferred Game of Amdram and train in the use of role-play and a socially

constructed need to improvise, which is not the same thing as the deep-seated

psychological Stroke desire required by Amdram. The perception that self-advancement

is best served by ability at improvisational role-play, by demonstrating empathy, and by

expressing strong emotion publicly, is valuable training for employment in industry and

commerce in all forms of work requiring public presentation. These are very worthwhile

skills to give our children and their wider application has contributed towards the present

emotional openness of society. This is a generation sensitised by their education into

perceiving public communal emotional „performance‟ as normal and desirable group

behaviour. This may go some way towards explaining the unprecedented public grief at

the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Her personality cult was itself a dramatisation of a

living individual rather than of a literary construct like a character in a play. While

Dianaism has spawned a flock of tall, media-orientated girls with close-cropped blonde

streaky hair and a lot of leg, more than any time in history, twenty and thirty-somethings

refuse to conform to the „tasteful‟ styling of established older generations. Emphasis

instead is on cultivating an over-dramatised visual persona, using Colour Me Beautiful

(Jackson 1980) to discover their right seasonal palette, or learning the economic

advantages of the language of clothes and how their inner feelings can affect their

appearance via a makeover from the House of Colour Image Consultants (Grourk 1998).

A new aesthetics is in operation, no longer grounded in the museum but flexing with

everyday life. Dick Hebdige shows how the common culture of young people uses role-

play to assert group and individual identity by subcultural styling (Hebdige 1978). In

Moving Culture (1990), Paul Willis confirms that late twentieth century youth

approaches cultural activities from a different starting point to previous generations.

The “institutionalised and increasingly standardised arts have absolutely no place in their

lives” (Willis 1990(a):9) for the “dramaturgy and poetics of everyday life, of social

presence, encounter and event” now maps out a “personalised cultural map… which

locates and helps to define personal identity and its difficulties and possibilities under

modern conditions” (ibid.:15).


Willis asks if it is “any longer useful to speak of individual works of art and live

performance as the focus of culture (especially that of the young)” when these no longer

form a significant part of their common culture (ibid.:67) but as the Lost Generation

grows into adults their new aesthetic is resolving into a number of new sites of cultural

performativity. Having sought out like-minded Game Players as partners, Players of

these new Games and are sending their children to out-of-school drama academies and

stage schools like Stagecoach, The London Performing Arts Co, and Helen O‟Grady to

learn the skills - not of performance - but of performativity. Here children „do‟ a form of

amateur drama – but not the family-based, multi-aged, anarchic Amdram where

traditional skills and expected norms are passed on by example. In age segregated

„classes‟ they are taught educationally approved key skills from both the Drama Training

mode and the DIE mode of drama pedagogy, preparing them for the increasingly

dramatised experiences of their formal education and life in a dramatised society.

DEVELOPMENT

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HELEN O‟GRADY DRAMA ACADEMY

From an advertisement, Croydon Post 01/01/1997

„Confidence, self-esteem and communication skills‟, are the products on offer, not

the techniques of stagecraft and the pleasures of acting. Personal development is the aim,

not acquiring the knowledge and ability to stage a play. Most „stage schools‟ will never

actually stage a full-length, text-based, dramatic play but will exhibit a form of singing

and dancing musical or a series of sketches, often improvised by the children.


Many „schools‟ will stage no more than one of these variety based „showcase‟

events a year, primarily because of the constant imperative of the annual drive to recruit

for the next academic year which needs the publicity gained from a review in the local

paper. Ostensibly presented to the public, but mainly staged for the benefit of the paying

parents, these collections of song, dance, and sketches owe very little to drama and teach

little about theatre work per se. The pleasure derived by the children lies in the fact that it

is all rehearsal, with a minimal substance in performance. I expect their mothers like it.

In common with Drama Academies like Helen O‟Grady, personal development is

also the principal aim of outreaching exercises run by commercial theatres like the

Saturday morning workshops run for the Croydon Young Peoples‟ Theatre (CYTO) at

the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon. In a general policy shared with stage schools and

academies, organisations like CYTO have an „open-door‟ policy. There are no auditions

to judge talent when joining, only enthusiasm is required to attend workshops, and

everyone who wants to join in will eventually find themselves on a stage in some

capacity, regardless of their semiotic value to the piece as a whole.

In the spring of 1997 Nick Stimson crammed over 140 members of The Young

Company, assembled from more than fifteen schools and colleges, on to the stage of the

Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Devon, in the musical The Hot Rock. In a post-show seminar

with drama educators and researchers on 11th

April, he explained how his approach as

director of this work, which was partly devised by the children, was about “developing

the imagination” and allowing the children to build self-esteem and belief in themselves.

He saw a visible “social transformation” among young people from deprived areas “who

otherwise may never do theatre”. He had not been happy with the production he directed

the previous year with a similar group. On that occasion he had “allowed the kids to ape

the worst professional practices”. That show had “turned out too Amdram” and “with too

much posturing”.

Not withstanding his ideals, seven members of a coach party of about thirty multi-

national drama educators left the auditorium at the interval and spent the second half of

the show in the bar verbalising judgements across a spectrum from “self-indulgent”,

“poor theatre”, and “unintelligible”, to “I‟m sure their mothers like it”. I wonder if they

would have walked out of the previous year‟s more „professional‟ „Amdram‟

production?


I do not believe an open-door youth theatre policy can „socially transform‟ large

numbers of socio-economic group C2, D, and E young people from deprived areas “who

otherwise may never do theatre” into desire-driven participants of lower middle class

Amdram. The idea that youth theatre is like some sort of „knight in shining armour‟ that

can rescue the children of the underclasses and working classes and inspire them to an

Arnoldian imitation of the Preferred Family Game of another class is a fallacy.

Paul Willis supports this argument in Common Culture (1990) when he describes

how young people born in this country of Caribbean and Asian parents negotiate

between their „inherited cultural capital‟, and the common culture they encounter at

school. Forced into a creative negotiation between the two cultures, loyalty to family

culture prevails over „English‟ common cultural values perceived as white and middle

class, although “the balance which young people strike between these things differs from

culture to culture and from individual to individual” (Willis (b) 1990:8-9). Their

aesthetics are grounded in their family cultures of improvised oral poetry (ibid.:74-76),

differentiated „black‟ grooming techniques (ibid.:92-94), and more rigorously segregated

gendered values systems (ibid.:109) which find little outlet within either the patriarchally

subversive Script or the suburban white nostalgic Mise en Scène favoured by Amdram.

However, the aesthetics of immigrant cultures do provide a basis to develop skills

that are „different‟ and therefore attractive and marketable to a wider range of consumers.

Hence, whereas few will join their local amateur drama society as adults, many children

born in this country of Caribbean and Asian families go on to successful professional

careers as performers or teachers of dance, music, and theatre skills. Adult Amdram

membership of non-white origin remains disproportionately low not only in relation to

the ethnic mix of the community but also in relation to the number of non-white children

in youth groups, stage schools, and Drama Training courses. Of those in vocational

training for a performing career at the WAC (Weekend Arts College) Performing Arts

and Media College, Hampstead, London NW3, 66% of the students come from ethnic

minorities, and 60% of the college‟s tutors are ex-WAC students (Greenwood 2000).

The Lost Generation problem is aggravated by the fact that, like students in drama

academies and schools, the children of Amdram youth sections are segregated from all

adult influence other than that of their teachers. They are not inducted by participation

with, or by the example of, their parents into the adult group‟s normative value structure.


Observation confirms that segregating the young from the mainstream activities of

an adult group has the same result as the current practices of drama teaching in schools.

Barbara Turner supports this opinion in her examination of drama opportunities for

young people in and around Manchester. As long ago as 1967, observing the high

number who leave when they cease to be „youth‟, this experienced drama teacher noted

the dangers of segregating the young from the adult activities of amateur groups.

The most important achievement of any Society is that children should feel that

they belong, that they want to be involved, and that the opportunity is there waiting

for them. Too many Societies appeared to lose sight of their initial reason for being.

(Turner 1967:40)

I disagree with the proposition of the LTG Conference in 1997, currently prevalent

in Amdram discourse, that open-door youth work will cure the Lost Generation problem.

When all open-door entrants to specially segregated „youth‟ sections, Youth Groups,

„stage schools‟ or „drama academies‟, white and non-white alike, grow up to the top limit

of that educational organisation‟s designated age range, this forces an end to activity

with that group. These young people will not then transfer their allegiance to an amateur

adult group unless they already have family ties with that group. Subsequent initiatives

to encourage Youth Groups in Little Theatre Guild member theatres have to date not had

a visible effect in retaining young people post 18, in effect post-A Levels, the age when a

large proportion of young B‟s and C1‟s leave home to go to colleges and universities.

When exploring the trends which give cause for concern that Amdram may soon

find itself Getting Out and ceasing activity, I am not convinced that the widening

demographic gap of the Lost Generation poses the greatest threat. Nor do I think that

Amdram‟s choice of „distasteful‟ material will enforce its ending. In Mansfield Park

(1814), where Jane Austen fictionally MemoBytes her own family history, Sir Thomas

burns the copies of Kotzebue‟s risqué Lovers Vows in response to public condemnation

by contemporary moralists (Kirkham 1983:93-98). The young Austen and Bertram

families had a limited choice of texts, but Amdram has access to a wider choice of

acceptable material. Nostalgia-based pre-Second World War texts are plentiful, and the

recent successes of Dancing at Lughnasa and Neville‟s Island show that suitable

Proppian texts, punishing the patriarchally threatening rise of female independence

and/or depicting the moral degeneracy of sociological group A‟s, are still being written.


However, my background reading suggests historical (non-fictional) precedents

where moral criticism, particularly in association with reactive legislation, have been

used to close down some previous forms of dramatic activity, including some which

were amateur. The mechanism is not restricted to the arts but can be observed in action

whenever a third party is rising in opposition to an existing power. The oppositional

party raises a public discourse condemning the very existence of a social situation

between two other factions, brings attention to behaviour hitherto accepted, stigmatises it

as deviant behaviour that threatens the way of life of others labelled „normal‟, and uses

the resulting public outcry to their own advantage.

To show how the oppositional party discovers and seizes on material for moral

disapproval, here is a remodelling of the Angular Ulterior Transaction, familiar from the

chapter on Performances. On the left I have added the Committee of Three representing

the rising power group whose interest lies in dethroning the current power group, whose

Committee of Three is now in the middle of the diagram.

P P P

A A A

C C C

RISING OPPOSITIONAL CURRENT AMATEUR DRAMA

POWER GROUP DOMINANT GROUP PRACTITIONERS

FIGURE 5 - THE CROSSED TRANSACTION BETWEEN AMATEUR DRAMA

AND A RISING OPPOSITIONAL POWER GROUP

Refer back to the diagrams in The Prologue to see how the relationship between the

amateur drama practitioners and any rising oppositional power group is the classic

Crossed Transaction situation described by Eric Berne. The oppositional group engages

the current hegemony in reasoned Adult exchanges regarding their cultural interests, and

quite reasonably expects that exchanges extended through them to those under their

influence would also be on a sensible complementary Adult level.


In the case of amateur drama, this is not so. Amdram practitioners are happily

engaged in an overt Parent/Adult Transaction and a covert Ulterior Parent/Child

Transaction with their patrons. There is no Adult/Adult Transaction.

The power-hungry Adult, who is not included in this cosy Parent/Child emotionally

dependent collusion, seizes on the chance to label the Bad Child behaviour tolerated by

the rival indulgent Parent as dangerous and deviant. This perceived threat is used to whip

up public disapproval, which on the surface is aimed at stopping the supposed offenders,

but in which the target is not the amateur drama practitioners themselves. The target is

their patron who has allowed them to get away with it so long. A brief consideration of

one historical instance of the quite sudden demise of a form of amateur drama will show

how this benefited the power aspirations of a third party in their struggle to politically

supersede an existing patron of amateur drama groups.

In 1537 Henry VIII banned the celebration of the majority of Catholic Saints‟ Days

on the grounds that they interfered with agricultural work, and promoted idleness and

riotous behaviour. Performances of Saints‟ Plays ceased abruptly due to “uncertainty

about the desirability of proceeding with performances in troubled times” (Wickham

1974:203). One of Henry‟s last acts before he died in 1547 was to suppress the Feast of

Corpus Christi, which celebrated the articles of the Catholic faith. The performance of

most Corpus Christi plays in England ended quite suddenly in 1547. From being the

social focus of many working men and women‟s lives, overnight the performance of a

Corpus Christi play actually became politically incorrect and unwise. Their patron power

base was the Catholic Church, more specifically, their local clergy. As a rising

oppositional third party, Henry was anxious to minimise the influence of the clergy in

general in England and increase his own power. In existence for nearly four hundred

years, these civic aided drama groups had become necessarily very specialised in terms

of their favoured scripts and the costumes and props they owned. Shorn of church

support they lacked both the funds and the leadership to change to using alternative texts.

Although some northern groups struggled on longer in the face of „learned mislike‟ and

fear of „the state‟ (ibid.:116), for the southern groups like that in Hereford located

uneasily within reach of retribution, 1548 was suddenly Getting Out time.


In that year the Clerk of the City Council recorded in their Great Black Book that

the funds formerly raised and devoted to the production of The Play Called Corpus

Christi were to be diverted to finance maintenance work within the city. (ibid.:204)

Costumes, props and the rest of the mise en scène went the way of all amateur

drama Transient Bricolage – recycled back into people‟s homes and wardrobes.

The speed, with which the rise of new media in the twentieth century has facilitated

both the spread of moral disapproval among the general public and the manufacturing of

public support for the introduction of reactionary legislation, has lead to the process

becoming known as a moral „panic‟. The first sociological analysis of a moral panic was

by S. Cohen of the 1960‟s discourse which demonised the supposed disparity between

British teenagers who called themselves Mods - who wore Italian-styled clothing, liked

the Beatles and rode scooters - and the leather-clad, motorbike-riding Rockers. In 1972

Cohen published Folk Devils and Moral Panics : The Creation of the Mods and Rockers,

exploring how media coverage and public commentary served to designate their

behaviour as deviant and destructive. As Kenneth Thompson points out in Moral Panics

(1998:31-2), in reality the supposedly violent seaside and fairground encounters between

Mods and Rockers were quite mundane, an attitude with which I can concur, since both

my husband and I were there. He wore winkle-pickers and I‟m more of a leather and

studs girl, but we neither of us felt deviant or delinquent. On the contrary we were

comfortably obeying the current constructed normative behaviour of our peers and

experienced very little violent or criminal activity. I can report that when his Lambretta

broke down at the side of the road it was friendly Rockers, not Mods, who stopped to

help him get it going again. The mechanism was further examined by Thompson (1998)

and by Goode & Ben-Yehuda (1994), using examples as diverse as the prohibition of

alcohol in the USA and the link between homosexuality and AIDS. The supposed threat

may be perceived to be to property (as from the supposed criminal destructiveness of

Mods and Rockers), to the quality of life (as from the behaviour of drunks), or to life

itself (as from the „risk‟ of catching AIDS). Even if the risk is minimal, once generated

this perceived threat is exaggerated out of all proportion to its actual existence by

deliberate media hype. This exploitation of the situation can be financially, socially, or

ideologically beneficial to the third party, but is always ultimately damaging to the

interests of those thus demonised.


Following on from, and as a result of, the increasing burden of responsibility being

experienced in Amdram‟s daily operations, it is possible to identify several potential

problem areas which could cause sufficient public concern as to force the „Getting Out‟

of amateurs from Owner-occupier Little Theatre management. Reactionary legislation

introduced in response to adverse public reaction would so affect Itinerant and Domestic

groups that financially they may also be unable to continue to present live drama in their

traditional indoor public performance spaces, so ending the present manifestation of

participant drama in the U.K. First among these possible problem areas is Access.

There is already a public perception to the effect that Amdram groups are

deliberately socially exclusive. Access to Amdram is quite rightly perceived as being

limited to the white middle class. The reasons why I believe working class and non-white

adults do not join Amdram groups are explored in Act I Scene II – The Venue, in Act I

Scene II – Cast and Crew, and in Act III Scene II – The Afterplay Party. Amdram can

not help but restrict itself as lower middle and white because this is the social location of

its Preferred Family Game. Add to this the fact that difficulty of access for the disabled

to venues, both front of house and backstage, is inherent in the construction of most of

the old and recycled buildings that amateurs use for public performance.

The October 1999 Part III of the Disability Act 1995 makes it illegal to maintain

policies and practices „which make it impossible or unreasonable difficult for disabled

people‟ to participate in a venture, including the use of service or public places open to

the public. In some cases (as yet untested, particularly for backstage participation) the

Act could apply to services provided by and to volunteers. Service providers have until

2004 to remove or alter physical features which prevent access or to provide a reasonable

alternative means of delivering the service. The probability is that most premises

admitting the public and used as amateur performance venues, including some Little

Theatres and most Itinerant venues like church and village halls would be unable to

comply financially and / or physically with altering their venues to provide backstage

disabled facilities. Meanwhile, those groups whose buildings are already blessed (or

cursed) with Lottery makeovers, (which always come with stipulations ensuring full

disabled facilities and enforced „outreaching‟ to the „disadvantaged‟), are already being

quietly lost to Amdram by being „professionalised‟ and absorbed into the commercial

mainstream.


The position is not clear on whether this legislation applies to private clubs, hence

the possible future relevance of the nature of the licence (Theatre or Club) granted to

Little Theatre premises. The following MemoByte summarises and typifies published

responses from many Owner-occupier groups turned down for Lottery funding to

improve disabled access.

“RATTY WRITES” - article in FROM THE RIVER-BANK

– the Newsletter of the Waterpump Players, Lower Nesten Levels.

Members will be aware that following the success of our neighbours, the Cuckoo

Players of Nesten, in rebuilding their Chapel theatre, we drew up plans for modifying our

Grade II Listed Victorian pumping station to comply with the Disability Discrimination

Act coming into force in 2004. We were encouraged by the Blankshire Lottery Grants

Officer to apply for the maximum possible grant of £30,000.

In spite of their support and even though it was the Regional Arts Officer who guided

us through two years work, and the spending of over £3,000 in fees for the surveys, audits,

and drawings required before an application could even be made, I regret to inform you

that our application has been turned down for the following reasons… I quote ….

“… areas where we felt the application had less strength included criteria

1 Public benefit (including maximum access for disabled people)

2 Quality of design and construction

3 Quality of arts activities planned

4 Quality of plans for education and marketing.”

These remarks seemed curious in the light of (for 1 and 2) our use of the services of

qualified architects, and the professional design of our disabled access arrangements which

would have enabled a wheelchair user into every part of the building except the top of the

fly-tower; (for 3 and 4) our seventy year history of, and on-going programme of, award-

winning quality drama consistently playing to full houses; and (also for 3 and 4) the weekly

training workshops and annual productions enjoyed by our over 100 Junior members.

In a subsequent post-mortem discussion with that same Arts Officer who had guided

our application we learned that not only were no amateurs likely to get any funding in the

foreseeable future, as the professional arts were regarded as being in more desperate need,

but that he had been aware of this all along. Consequently, the Executive Committee have

made a decision not to direct hard-earned funds towards any further improvement in

disabled facilities, but to concentrate only on facilities which will benefit all our members.


This could mean we might not be granted a licence at some future date. We are now,

therefore, investigating the avenues whereby we become a theatre club, thus making entry

to our premises even more discriminatory, not less.

A second problem area may be Finance. Amdram‟s greatest opportunity for

subversion lies in its conflict with the commercial values of paying and payment which

plays upon the difference between production and consumption. As Little Theatres

progressively find themselves required to run as „businesses‟, conflicts arise between the

amateurs‟ desire for an autonomous playplace, and the needs of any employees with

regard to the premises as a workplace. Employment legislation is now so complex and

financially punitive to transgressors that, should a serious and legislated dispute arise

between any group forced to employ professional staff and an employee, I doubt the

amateur group in question would financially survive losing a court case.

Access and Finance are two sides of the problem of Elitism, with the potential to

combine in one large, media-encouraged moral outrage concerning Lottery funded and

subsidised premises. Rumbling in the background is an incipient public backlash over the

sums of Lottery money that have already been handed over to personally wealthy middle

class amateurs to enable them to have more fun, with no appreciable increase in benefit

to other sections of the community, particularly the lower classes who, as we have seen,

follow different Preferred Family Games. That this could so enflame public opinion that

reactionary legislation resulting in state seizure of any amateur arts provisions that have

already received such funding is not too big a step. I believe that the modern form of

amateur drama - Amdram - is perceived by a developing egalitarian class structure as the

elitist relic (along with foxhunting and game shooting) of a declining capitalist class

structure, ripe to be scrutinised more closely as part of the ongoing process of wresting

power out of the hands of the previously upper middle management of U.K. Ltd.

The potentially most explosive site of public concern is that of Safety. The problem

lies partly with amateurs‟ subversive reaction to what they see as excessive control – as

found in escalating theatre safety legislation - and partly with the growing complexity of

technical equipment. Combine this with the „open-door‟, anyone-can-have-a-go policy

inherent in voluntary theatre in which the untrained and unaware are let loose among

electricity and heavy objects and you have an enormous potential for accidents.


Howard Bird, Executive Director of the Association of British Theatre Technicians

points out the dangers of the amateur attitude to safety.

In terms of health and safety, technological knowledge and good working practice

it is sheer nonsense to believe there is one rule for the professional and another for

the amateur. If a piece of equipment is dangerous it does not distinguish between

amateur and professional. …..I have so often heard of standards slipping because

„it is only for the amateurs‟ or conversely „Health and Safety issues aren‟t important,

we‟re not being employed‟. (Howard Bird, Amateur Stage, Feb. 2000:23)

As Ulrich Beck points out, this attitude is fundamentally related to conscious class

positioning and is in direct opposition to legislation for minimising risk. To a certain

extent the ability to buy safety and freedom from risk in major aspects of their lives

deceives the middle classes into a belief that they are above risk in all situations (Beck

1992:35). However in the essentially socialist „risk society‟ of westernised society today,

anxiety that the worst may happen turns our goals from the positive and creative to the

negative and defensive. The „nanny‟ state lays down safety rules for all her Children.

Basically, one is no longer concerned with attaining something „good‟, but rather

with preventing the worst; self-limitation is the goal which emerges. The dream

of the class society is that everyone wants and ought to have a share of the pie.

The utopia of the risk society is that everyone should be spared from poisoning.

(Beck 1992:49)

Of course there must be new safety regulations in the light of new technology to

limit the risks involved, but as Howard Bird acknowledges above, Amdram thrives on

risk-taking and breaking all sorts of rules, not just those of safety. Amateurs want their

„share of the pie‟ even if they have to take risks, and subvert or ignore rules, to get it.

Safety regulations control risk, but they also close down spaces for unregulated and

spontaneous action. Amdram participants will habitually kick against any outside

interference that appears solely designed to make their activities more difficult,

complicated and rule bound - but simply because they are amateurs, they don‟t have the

time and resources to assimilate and implement new legislation until it comes up and

kicks them in the face. As Howard Bird points out - if a piece of equipment is dangerous

it does not distinguish between amateur and professional, but then neither does the

financially crippling expense of fulfilling safety and disability regulations.

No U.K. amateur theatre burnt down in the twentieth century with people in it.

But...


In the course of this study alone I have seen people damaged by falling off the ends

of rostra, blundering into things in the dark, dropping things from heights, and generally

not being careful.

This is not necessarily a deliberate disregard for safety. They are just not trained,

not aware, and too preoccupied with coming to grips with a steep learning curve in

something else, usually their lines.

I witnessed an elderly trouper fall off a moving truck in the dark at a dress rehearsal

and go on to do fourteen shows with a fracture before seeking medical treatment, lest the

doctor forbid performance. I have seen fire doors chained and padlocked when there has

been seventy children in the building. I have smelled smoke and tracked it down to a

lighted cigarette balanced on a bench in a wood-chip strewn scenery workshop. I have

seen one man attempt to manoeuvre a twelve-foot flat single-handed onto the stage with

a cigarette in his mouth and brush the ash off with the canvas surface. I have several

times seen lamps fall out of lighting riggings and explode inches from performers.

… A spotlight suspended over an audience by just a loop of gaffer tape… A fire door

held open by a wad of rags… Children playing on a twenty-foot tall ladder…

I won‟t go on.

Someday, somewhere, someone…

…if a theatre burns down with people in it, or children are killed by a backstage

accident, or in fact if anything happens which highlights the potential threat - to property,

quality of life, or life itself - inherent in the unprofessional and unsafe practises of

amateurs, public pressure towards reactionary legislation could shut down Amdram.

Period.

It would be only a matter of time to Getting Out time for Amdram.

14 Act lll Scene lll - Getting Out

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