2Many people who do high school musicals return to theatre as adults, maybe after college or settling into working life, in community theatre. Community theatres started in the United States in the early twentieth century to engage citizens in their towns, promote patriotism, and instill a sense of civic pride through performance. The label now applies to the thousands of amateur groups across the country that are typically run by a few paid staff but mostly operate on volunteer labor, including a twelve-group consortium, the Kelsey Theatre in New Jersey. These well-established companies cast intergenerationally, sometimes with six-year-old children and seventy-year-old adults in the same show. They proudly take on the label “community theatre,” and renew themselves through families and through webs of connections that spread to local high schools, community colleges, summer day camps, and other community theatres in the region. This chapter follows a year in the life of this community theatre, focusing on the activities of the three directors with different working styles. It describes auditions, rehearsals, and performances, and includes many voices of people who elect to spend their time after school and after work making musical theatre, which some have been doing their whole lives. The chapter discusses the themes of community, professionalism versus the amateur, and leisure in the context of community theatre.
International Experience and Knowledge in the United States
