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This book is the first major study of amateur theatre, offering new perspectives on its place in the cultural and social life of communities. Historically informed, it traces how amateur theatre has impacted national repertoires, contributed to diverse creative economies, and responded to changing patterns of labour. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research, it traces the importance of amateur theatre to crafting places and the ways in which it sustains the creativity of amateur theatre over a lifetime. It asks: how does amateur theatre-making contribute to the twenty-first century amateur turn?

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1. Ecologies of Amateur Theatre.- 2. Valuing Amateur Theatre.- 3. Amateur Repertoires.- 4. Amateur Theatre,Place and Place-Making.- 5. Making Time for Amateur Theatre: Work, Labour and Free Time.- 6. Making Amateur Theatre.- 7. Amateur Theatre: Heritage and Invented Traditions.- 8. Theatre and the Amateur Turn: Future Ecologies.

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Helen Nicholson is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her books include Applied Drama: The Gift of Theatre (2005/2014), Theatre, Education and Performance (2011), and co-edited collections Performance and Participation (2017) and Critical Perspectives on Applied Theatre (2016). With Nadine Holdsworth and Jane Milling as Co-Investigators, she was Principal Investigator on two research projects on amateur theatre, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has written Joan Littlewood´s Theatre (2011), Theatre & Nation (2010) and Joan Littlewood (2006), edited Theatre and National Identity (2014), and co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on amateur theatre (2017).
Jane Milling is Associate Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter, UK. She has co-authored Devising Performance (2005/2015), Modern British Playwrighting: the 1980s (2012), and co-edited The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Volume 1 (2004) and Extraordinary Actors (2004).

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