Is this just local or .....?

If I may add another 2 cent's worth. Years ago a group of friends and I decided to start putting on amateur theatre shows. We had met doing amateur theatre and 'doing our own thing' seemed like the perfect way to consolidate our friendship and do what we loved all together. We had a few, 4, glorious years of fun, cast parties and won a several local theatre awards for our troubles along the way. Ultimately however, we folded. Part of our demise was borne of the fact that a group of people who met as actors increasingly found themselves stuck doing the admin, grunt work and running the bloody company for OTHER people to get on stage in our shows! The greater part of our defeat, and some people could not see it at the time, was the fact that a clique of friends had started this thing, to largely serve their own purposes, and we had inadvertantly made it impossible for any new people, ideas or help to infiltrate the ranks, shoulder some of the load and move the company forward. Exhaustion and the never ending rigours of a small group of people running a business combined with no opportunities to just act anywhere saw us fold. Yes, we had great ideas and noble intentions but not allowing our little group to be infiltrated or changed by anyone outside the original gang was a fast track to our demise. Looking back, we actually had numerous people offer up their expertise, time, skills and advice. We were a fun gang to be around and it's not as if no-one wanted to be a part of what we were doing. Ok, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. However, new ideas and people, and the space to let them contribute would have saved our group and perhaps would also breath fresh life in to committees and companies struggling to get out of the cyclical rut they find themselves in. Actually, it ended up being 5 cent's worth! Tulipa.