Community Theatre is important not only for the community but artists and crew to practice their craft. It gives people the chance to connect to other artists as well as industry professionals and make important connections that can help them build their experience to ensure they keep working, and gaining knowledge in their chosen industry. It gives people a place to feel safe and secure as they explore other worlds and delve deeper into evolving characters and learning how to understand a story.
It also paves the way for people to get career advice from veterans in the industry as well as learn techniques that can appeal to them towards being working professionals. It's also vital for learning the inner workings of how a show runs, from the tech side to the production side and right into the acting, there are so many aspects that make each production a success, so it's important for artists to know something about every piece of the so called puzzle! It's absolutely vital for meeting a community of like minded individuals you can explore with, people on the same page as you, wanting to learn from one another and willing to trust each other on stage.
Community Theatre also allows for the arts to be brought to audiences big and small and it's effects can be far reaching. The pieces we grew up seeing, or have seen as adults in the Theatre can and have followed us through much of our lives. Reaching us from a place and perspective that we never knew possible until we took our seats in front of the stage and for one brief moment in time, connected with not only the actors on stage, but others in the audience as well. Community Theatre opens our eyes to possibilities, our minds to stretch far beyond reasonable imagination and our hearts to learn, heal and gain unimaginable joy from what we see before unfolding our eyes. For the time we share together inside the Theatre, pause from the outside world around us, we are all on the same page. If you feel anything, emotions that stir deep within you, or a twitch, one single twitch of anything....you have experienced something wonderful because of Community Theatre.
Community Theatre is a curious thing in the way that it belongs to each and every one of us on a different level, and at the very same time.....is so deeply personal. We must do our best to keep it alive, no matter what the circumstance, the spark lives in each one of us that has been lucky enough to experience it. We can all do our parts in helping keep our Community Theatre scene thriving, donations, volunteering, acting and much more. Like it or not (and sometimes you might not) we are a family.
