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    Greater Boston Community Theater
    Greater Boston Community Theater
    Greater Boston Community Theater
    Ebook163 pages41 minutes

    Greater Boston Community Theater

    By Judson Lee Pierce

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    About this ebook

    The roots of community theater can be traced back to before the Revolutionary War. In the years that followed, many towns throughout America were fortunate to have both professional and amateur acting companies. The evolution of the moving picture forced many of these professional theaters to close their doors, but theater lovers in small communities still wanted the real thing, live theater. Today there are numerous community theater groups around the Boston area, including the oldest continuing community theater group in the country, the Footlight Club, which was founded in 1877. In the spirit of community, many theater companies donate to charities and sponsor playwriting contests and scholarship programs. They all share a common goal: bring live theater to suburban communities. Greater Boston Community Theater presents rare photographs from more than a dozen community theaters to document and celebrate the rich tapestry of theater life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 20, 2006
    ISBN9781439618059
    Greater Boston Community Theater
    Author

    Judson Lee Pierce

    Judson Lee Pierce has a degree in political science from Vassar College and a juris doctor from Suffolk University. Pierce has acted in more than 50 plays and serves on the board of directors for the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theaters.

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      Book preview

      Greater Boston Community Theater - Judson Lee Pierce

      author.

      INTRODUCTION

      Through depression and war and the advent of television and computers and commuters and all manner of social and economic change, a few people have continued, against reason, to want to make theater.

      —Leah Hager Cohen, The Stuff of Dreams

      Community theater offers our American society a chance at renewed attention to the common things we all have a stake in. It has the best chance of reaching the average citizen and family, and it represents a shared goal among people of various ages and backgrounds. It survives for the good of the community and is a positive force in civic life. It is democracy prompting public participation and hard work and thrives on support from a cross section of our community. The people past and present who have contributed to this endeavor are heroes to the community.

      The geographical area around Boston has for years been blessed with numerous quality community theaters. Many of the oldest continually running community theaters in the United States are in this area, and many others are growing and just coming into existence in the present time. What are the reasons that local theater has taken such a hold in this area of the United States and what are some of the ways that we as a society can keep it alive are two of the questions that this book aims to respond to.

      To fully address these questions one must understand what theater is and what it aspires to be. The community theater movement has always been about hard work and cooperation. There is much to be done in the production of a play that the audience does not readily appreciate. From start to finish, a community theater will have spent hundreds of hours on any given production from the play reading committee selecting the piece and its director, to the casting committee selecting the actors, to the director and producer collaborating on a backstage crew and designers, to the crew and designers assembling the set, lighting, and sound, through the rehearsal process and actual performances themselves.

      Community theater, as is the case with American society, strives for a balance between the goals of the individual and the goals of his or her fellow actors and crew. For the individual, it allows one to continue with their dreams of performing, pursuing a passion in theater, while carrying on the day-to-day work life they have chosen. It allows someone to create something new and provides a positive force for self-confidence. For the team, participating in theater fosters the sense of being part of a family, everyone working together for the common good, creating new friendships along the way. For the community at large, local theater offers entertainment, education, and enlightenment. This incredible opportunity to impact our communities brings a responsibility with it as well, as community theaters ought to be accountable to the ideal of theater as an art form and not just a form of recreation and social interaction. The Arlington Friends of the Drama mission statement, written in 1934 when it was recognized as a legal corporation, states best what community theater strives to accomplish: To enlighten and educate the public concerning the value of the theatre as a vital factor toward the higher development of dramatic art and to establish a permanent playhouse in the Town where the best plays of all times may be presented, where competent actors may be afforded an opportunity of appearing before the public under favorable conditions and to encourage playwrights and actors in the best traditions of the dramatic profession.

      This book honors those who, over the past 130 years, have continued in the best traditions of the dramatic profession. For they are those who arrive from days spent as office workers and welders, bookkeepers and bakers, tutors and homemakers and being asked to step up and bare themselves, to play make-believe with strangers, in front of other strangers, out of context.

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