The authors of a new series of marketing guides outline the issues behind their titles. Jonathan Meth examines what constitutes ‘amateur’.
amateur? ….ish
Amateur is one of those words like ‘critical’ that has a duplicity of meanings. It derives from the Latin ‘amare’ (to love) and can be understood as ‘activity pursued for its own sake, or for no remuneration’. But it also has a pejorative connotation of somehow meaning shoddy and unprofessional.
A quick glance at the Arts Council England website would, until recently, have excluded any mention of the term ‘amateur’ beyond footnotes in the CVs of a couple of local councillors on regional boards. In Wales they have always had a different approach to the concept of amateur and professional. Whether through cultural traditions such as the Eisteddfod or a wholly separate approach to the importance of participatory arts, this approach contrasts markedly with the way in which amateur has been pitted against professional across the border in England.
Robert Hutchison and Andrew Feist’s analysis in ‘Amateur Arts in the UK’, over 10 years ago, indicated that we might have much to learn from the Welsh approach: “It is worth restating that the term ‘amateur’ is not unambiguously separated from the term ‘professional’ and that rather than a clear amateur–professional divide, there is a complex amateur-professional continuum of accomplishment and activity. The important point is that most serious practitioners of the arts will probably place themselves at different points along these axes and that those positions will differ at different periods of their lives.”
In breaking down barriers such as those between so-called high and low art, the twin drivers of inclusivity and audience development have latterly allowed a repositioning of amateur and professional. The Wales-based playwright Lucy Gough dropped me a note recently. As well as writing plays for stage and radio she currently writes for Mersey TV’s Hollyoaks. She said: “a company in Scotland asked if they could produce, for a Scottish amateur dramatic competition, a play they had just heard of mine on the radio, called ‘The Raft’… a totally surreal play full of shrouds, submarines, and a soul floating about on a mattress in a sea of dread – so no mean feat to stage. Anyway, they did and won loads of awards – lovely feeling for me and interesting since it seems acres away from the usual plays they did, so very brave. But I think it also strikes another bell for this link between professional writer and amateur company. When they phoned to tell me their news – and combined with the letters and photos they’ve been sending – I have to say their enthusiasm and commitment is at the heart of theatre…”
Excellence compromised? Just another feature of dumbed-down popularisation of culture? I don’t think so. How many duff nights have we all sat through in the ‘professional’ theatre? The same is true, of course, at any point along the amateur-professional continuum. The arts-funding system in England has understood that if it can tap in to the hundreds of thousands of people across Britain involved in amateur theatre and facilitate closer collaboration with professionally accomplished artists, then there are rich opportunities for development and employment.
‘Commissioning new work – a good practice guide for amateur theatre companies and playwrights’, is published by Arts Council England and written by Jonathan Meth, Director of writernet. It is available as a PDF at http://www.artscouncil.org.uk