Community theatre

Community Theatre in South Africa

Community theatre became a widely used term in the 1980-2000 period, but one which has never been satisfactorily defined (see Community Theatre above). In South Africa the term is used in a range of meaning stretching from something approximating the older concept of amateur theatre (i.e. local theatre lovers who do plays for a hobby) to socio-politically committed organisations (often NGO’s) intent on involving and conscientizing the particular community. This range exists not only in the vocabulary of the critics and scholars, but in that of the practitioners themselves. Under the new legislation and practices following on the 1996 White Paper on Arts Culture and Heritage, the latter definition of a community theatre as one which has an educational and social obligations within particular communities (and thus has access to earmarked funding for these purposes), has gained credence and is argued strongly by a number of practitioners and critics. (Cf Kruger, 1999). However, much of the argument seems to be negative, divisive and oppositional, tending to define it by attacking the shortcomings of amateur, professional, art, serious, etc forms of theatre, rather than indicating in what way community theatre is a distinctive form in itself (if there is indeed a single defineable entity one might designate “community theatre”). Given the shape of the theatrical system from the 1990’s onward, with its base in non-conventional venues, eclectic performance forms and festivcal circuit, such nitpicking appears a little gratuitous, and for the general public the distinctions are far less clear and make little difference to what they go to see and support. * EXPAND