Amateur Theatre Wiki

Welcome to the Amateur Theatre Wiki. This is a place for anyone passionate about amateur theatre. Here, you can find out more about amateur theatre in your home country, town or village. You can discover what amateur theatre was like a century ago and learn how it works elsewhere around the world. Most importantly of all, you can join our growing community of amateur theatre historians, who are busy adding their own amateur theatre histories to this site.

History starts now - and the site includes details of productions and performances that happened this year, as well as those that took place in the distant past. It is a work in progress, and we need your help to grow this Wiki site.

The Gay Lothario: The Great and Celebrated Amateur of Fashion
Portrait of Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein
Detail from Theatre Bill, 1827
Theatergesellschaft Bad Endorf (theatre association in Bad Endorf, Germany)
Caricature of Herbert Gardner

Why should you get involved as a contributor?

For too long amateur theatre has been undervalued in societies and cultures around the world. In most nations, the study of theatre has focussed almost exclusively on professional activity. However, amateur theatre has played a vital role in many theatrical ecologies and needs greater acknowledgement. It's only through documenting amateur theatrical activities and histories that the contribution of amateur theatre to these ecologies can begin to be recognised.

How can you get involved?

Firstly, don't be scared! We've made adding entries and editing the Amateur Theatre Wiki as easy as possible. Even if you have no experience editing websites before, this couldn't be easier.

Before you start, please make sure that you are aware of the community guidelines.

To get you started, we've created a number of helpful guides. Find out how to:

Set yourself up as an editor
Create an entry
Edit an existing entry by using the Visual Editor
Add a picture to an entry

How can you search the site?

At the top of the page you can enter your search terms into the bar at the top of the page, where it says 'Search Amateur Theatre Wiki'. Alternatively, you might find it useful to search by category. Our categories include:

You might also want to search by country.

Example Entries

To give you an idea what sort of information you might find in the Amateur Theatre Wiki, here are some example entries for you to view:

Example 1 - Robert Coates (Categories - People and Britain)
Example 2 - Theatergesellschaft Urania (Category - Clubs, Societies and Institutions and Germany)
Example 3 - Löfholmen’s Theatre Society (Categories - Clubs, Societies and Institutions and Sweden)
Example 4 - Campden House (Categories - Venues and Britain)

Structured Data

The project has also produced a list of contemporary amateur theater associations which can be visualized as a map here. It contains (at the moment) only most of Germany's amateur theater scene organized by Bund Deutscher Amateurtheater. A full list of the amateur theaters can be found here.