Amateur Theatre - A Stressful Business

Amateur Theatre is a stressful business. There can be no denying that. Whoever has even come within a sniff of acting in/directing/producing/helping/selling tickets/making the tea in an amateur theatre production will explain that it's quite difficult.A great deal can (and invariably does) go awry. I'm not going to mention any specifics (but I'm certain you are able to all tell your own amateur theatre horror stories!), but there seems to be something about it that causes a variety of problems.
These can come anytime throughout an amateur theatre production. A member of the cast might break a leg, the Director might lose their mind, the backstage manager might drink all of the "pretend" gin for your pivotal scene. An item of vital electrical equipment might short at the eleventh hour, a passing ant might sneeze and knock the set over, or someone might lose that glass eye that was so fundamental to that parlor scene at the conclusion of act one, necessitating a marble to be found at the eleventh hour.
And even should your amateur theatre production makes it to opening night with all of its parts still intact, it does not necessarily mean the Gods have smiled kindly on you this time. How can you tell what the audience will think, just how much whiskey has the dsm been drinking, and where are those que cards you spent days making, that you can't do without, you start to wonder the reason why you even bothered..........
And then it's curtain up....
The lighting is upon you.....
That first line, the joke on which everything hangs.....

.....and the audience roars with laughter. You feel your spirit soar, Noel Coward himself couldn't do it better than you, Dench would be your understudy, Branagh is back stage making the half-time drinks!So you remember. You remember why you go through it. That sense of achievement, that joy at the completion of the task. No matter what you've done, the way you did it, you did it. And that's the joy of amateur theatre. That feeling of winning, against impossible odds. It's impossible to ever take that away from you.

Want to get involved in amateur dramatics in Wolverhampton and Codsall. Visit Codsall Dramatic Society or like us on Facebook. Come see our next amateur dramatics production in Wolverhampton and Codsall, The Memory of Water, by Shelagh Stephenson, 25th-28th September at Codsall Village Hall.