Amateur versus Community

There's a lady here in Adelaide who is on every mailing list in the State and tells me she on average goes to the theatre a couple of times a week. She's an associate member of every theatre company that runs that kind of scheme and she loves it all. She is very aware of what is "amateur" and what is "professional". She just loves theatre. Long may she live and may many more of her kind come into existence. Some of the debate here is starting to play with how some terms have begun to be semantically loaded. Sure the actual definition of amatuer is "for the love of it" and the definition of professional is "for pay" but attitudes and quality of work have begun to be hung upon these terms and amateur has become a word that is semantically loaded in the negative. Hence, I beleive, Community Theatre. Community Theatre however for me and obviously for Na means something else entirely it means professional (ie Paid) theatre working within a community (geographical, racial, cultural etc) and producing work that is relevant to concerns and issues of that community and I am glad to hear that it survives in Melbourne. By the way Na, my comments about pro's looking down their noses at amateurs are aimed at a particular type of pro who almost certainly would not be active on a site like this. I'm sure you recognise the breed. Local theatre sounds good to me. In relation to some people getting paid on shows and others not. For many years we have been paying musicians who play for our musicals. Many of these people are in fact not fully pro musicians as they have other day jobs. I am not critiscising this situation but suggesting that if we are clear about who gets paid and why up front than if the performers who are not getting paid still want to do it then fine. Craig the phenomenon of producers of "amateur" theatre who are lining their own pockets and not paying performers is not unique to Perth as I am sure you are aware. If I work for them they pay me. Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. www.tonymoore.id.au