A Wider Perspective on Theatre Making…
Photo credit: Rankin
Besties, too often the focus of articles about theatre making is on the latest news of a West End opening or a review of a regional theatre tour, but we recognise that a vital part of the theatre ecosystem extends between these pinnacles of the professional endeavour and that many people’s passion for live performance starts or is fuelled by engaging in other forms of live performance. We have discussed the importance of pantomime and the value of youth engagement programmes around the country elsewhere in these articles, so here we consider some other ways that we can engage and enjoy live performance.
Amateur Theatre
The local amateur theatre societies provide insight to the challenges of producing a show, running a production and the thrill of a warm ovation at the end of the night (even if you are standing in the wings or behind the followspot). For many, it is a lifestyle choice, devoting large parts of their leisure time to rehearsing, set building and the committees required to run a society safely and successfully, as well as the social network and relationships that develop in that process. These are surely the core audiences of so many regional shows and some may even go on to develop careers in professional theatre from these humble beginnings. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, who said in the 19th century, “Every artist was first an amateur” describing a path of every creative person to become accomplished in their art. In the world of theatre, it starts at school and with the amateur dramatic societies.
NODA
NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association) is the organisation that, since 1899, has sought to support and reward those people who run these local societies. Though it does not regularly publish its membership, it is thought to have around 2,000 member societies across its 11 national regions, although many more amateur productions will be mounted without being a member of NODA. Estimates of the number of participants in amateur theatre are also hard to find but over 400,000 are thought to be involved each year on stage, backstage or front of house, all as amateurs. Some of the bigger societies will mount over four shows a year but most probably focus on one or two. Some also may hire a professional director or musical director to lead the process while others rely on an experienced amateur actor to step up into the role.
NODA provides relatively cost-effective public liability and show insurance, advice factsheets and phone services, and a series of regional awards and service medals to recognise the best productions each year. The regions are broken down into districts each with an appointed rep who gets to know the societies and provides show reports on each production seen. Naturally, these are generally encouraging and effusive, unlike many professional critical reviews, but usually offer some insight on how the society could improve its performances. The District and Regional Awards are valued as they provide recognition amongst a peer group of good work even if they, like professional reviews, are simply one person’s opinion.
There is a vibrant amateur scene for everyone from four years and up, and we urge you to support your local society by buying a ticket, taking part or even donating to fund a place for a young person to join a local theatre project so that they to develop the same passion for theatre that inspired us.
Edinburgh Fringe
In 2026, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival will run from 7-31 August across the city. It is a not-to-be-missed event for anyone who shares our passion for live theatre and if you have not been before, we urge you to plan a visit soon! It all began in 1947 with eight companies performing on the fringe of the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival. Since then, it has grown enormously and has become a rite of passage for any young aspiring performer to say, “I played the Edinburgh Fringe!” with many returning each year. There are around 3,800 productions this year, many performing six days a week across the whole period. It can be an exhausting schedule for artistes and audiences. So how do you make the most of your visit?
Venues:
There are over 260 venues listed in the annual brochure spread across the city, from a tour of the Art Studios at Beaver Hall Studios (Venue 425) in the north of city, to the immersive experience at Cornerstone (Venue 484) in the South, from choral evensong at St Michael and All Saints (Venue 92) in the East, to musical theatre at St Bride Community Centre (Venue 412) in the West, as well as venues in neighbouring Leith. There are street events, the PBH free fringe events (which started in 1996, funded by bucket collections) as well as the eclectic mix of Fringe shows.
Don’t make the mistake of booking shows without planning the time and route between venues. Edinburgh is a hilly city, and you need to leave time between shows. We always focus on our favourite venues and although this does not guarantee quality, it does enable a more relaxed way of planning a full day of seeing shows. They generally run from 11 am to midnight in one-hour time slots with a 15 minute set up time and 10 minutes get out time which limits the staging possible!
Our favourite venues include: Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) which has multiple performances spaces and a range of catering offerings, the venues around George Square, The Assembly (Venues 3,8 and 17), Underbelly (Venue 300) and the Greenside (Venue 236) in George Street, north of Waverley Station. But equally, the Gilded Balloon venues (24,64 and 140) together with the Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) make another attractive group of venues.
Digital Theatre
British theatre is just as much part of British Culture and part of the global appeal to visitors to this country as Premier League football, but audiences consume it differently. While there is no doubt in our mind that live football in a stadium is the best way to watch a game, a live TV broadcast - whether watched in the pub or at home - still captures the excitement and uncertainly of the outcome of a football match and indeed, in some cases, enhances it with replays and occasionally some insightful punditry. Recorded and broadcast theatre does not have the same engagement on screen (especially on a small one) to hold our attention as the shared experience of a live theatre audience does. The flattening of the view into 2D deadens the experience, while the multi-camera view and commentary of football can improve it. Yet as the millennials spend their life gazing at screens for entertainment, and the ageing population find the travel and expense of live theatre more of a barrier, it feels like there should be an opportunity for digital theatre into our homes or cinema screens to find an audience. It may not generate the exponential growth of income that football experienced, but it should widen the appeal and promote live theatre to wider audiences.
Capture Economics
Producers and rights holders remain unconvinced that the potential is worth the additional risk and expense of capture without a way of securing a pay-per-view fee, and broadcasters and streamers will not pay a large enough upfront fee to persuade them to record the performance. Some rights holders may be unwilling to grant rights for fear of losing a potentially larger rights fee from a studio for a film version. Actors, too, may have been concerned about their live performance being captured for eternity in a way they did not like but with current captures including multi camera shots over a couple of performances and a good editor, those live lapses they fear can usually be edited out. So once again, it boils down to economics. Can the expected lifetime income from a capture provide a return on the investment in broadcast rights, technical capture costs, lost seat income of recorded performances, cast and crew incentive payments, and the distribution costs?
For the right title with star casting, a cinema release followed by a broadcast or streamed showing can work but if a producer is nervous of recouping his capitalisation in a live run, he is unlikely to commit the extra costs to capture. There is no evidence to suggest that a live capture to cinema reduces ticket sales of a West End run or a subsequent UK tour. If anything, the awareness and interest generated supports bookings.
Cinema Distribution
Most of the value from a theatre capture comes from a successfully global cinema release but post pandemic, the event cinema numbers do not seem to have recovered to their pre-2019 levels. Fleabag took around £4m at the UK box office in 2019 , Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch in 2015 took a similar amount, Both will have taken at least that amount in the rest of the global cinema market. Post pandemic, Prima Facie with Jodie Comer has been an exception taking over £5m in UK cinema release box office but James Norton’s controversial A Little Life took only £1.5m and David Tennant’s Good around £1.3m. With over half of the GBO being retained by the cinemas themselves, anything less than these numbers is unlikely to cover the costs of capture, rights, and distribution for a play, with musicals having significantly higher costs of rights and capture. The record for event cinema was the Taylor Swift: New Eras Tour which took £12m at the UK Cinema box office and many times that around the world. Music events have been embraced by artistes, promotors and fans but the event theatre market remains a tricky challenge for producers.
We believe that cinema releases and streaming are an essential element of a strategy to widen the appeal of the theatre and make it accessible to audiences constrained by travel or finances from going to a theatre. The Arts Council should consider how it supports the capture and distribution to achieve this increased reach and accessibility. As audiences are built and the habit of watching on screen formed, the financial returns will improve, and more shows will be captured. What’s more, we believe this will encourage more people to book for the real thing in a theatre.
Cruise Ship Entertainment
Another much-maligned entertainment category of live entertainment are the shows on cruise ships that sail around the global seas. There are many reasons for booking a holiday on a cruise ship; waking up in a different port each morning, the all-you-can-drink packages, the all-inclusive food all day long diet, and the pamper yourself in the health spa experience. Yet for us, it has always been the on-board entertainment that appeals to us when booking. There is plenty to do from quizzes, karaoke, insight lectures, films and live music in every bar but it is the shows that we enjoy after each evening meal. Though Jane Macdonald may have found fame and fortune as a cruise ship entertainer, many others sometimes see it as where you start your career or where you end it when your face no longer fits the TV. But we have found if you choose your cruise line carefully, the entertainment is first class and provides the highlights of the holiday.
Our most recent experience was the fabulous Theatre at Sea Transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary II from Southampton to New York. It was a special celebration of musical theatre and especially those performers and productions that have won Olivier Awards (formerly SWET Awards) from The Society of London Theatres (SOLT). Now in its third edition (2022 and 2024 before) and wonderfully curated by former SOLT chief executive Julian Bird, it offers an insightful action-packed voyage that fills most of the six sea days of the crossing. A combination of insight lectures, interviews with the stars, workshops, quizzes, and splendid cabaret-style shows, it has something for everyone who loves musicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
The 2026 programme was led by Liz Roberston who found fame as Eliza Dolittle in the first revival of My Fair Lady in 1979 and then married the librettist Alan Jay Lerner (his eighth wife) in 1981. Also on board were Shanay Holmes (recently Nancy in the Chichester/West End production of Oliver!), Linzi Hateley (best known as a Narrator of Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat), Frances Ruffelle (the original Eponine in Les Miserables), and Norman Bowman (recent star of Brigadoon at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre). The winner of ITV’s Mamma Mia Tobias Turley, regular jazz pianist at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, Jamie Safir, and Hugh Maynard, the first black Sweeney Todd complete the performance talent.
The multi-talented Ben Stock wonderfully teams up with the sartorially elegant pianist Tom Carradine in several shows including a wonderful tribute to old fashioned British Music Hall in their show Don’t Dilly Dally, which will tour UK later this year. Ben also leads the passenger choir of around 100 who perform on the Royal Court Stage on the last day, while David McMullan leads the dance workshops to perform a couple of routines.
The Theatre At Sea programme includes well produced shows: A Little Bit of Lerner, The Best of British Oliviers, Life Upon a Wicked Stage, The Scot and the Showgirl, and The Oliviers in Concert to entertain a full house of 1,200 guest twice nightly. There is hardly time to fit in seeing every element of the programme as well as all the eating on board, but we would have, like Oliver!, liked more!
They rounded the whole programme off with a very well organised signing and selfie session in the Grand Lobby where guests had a chance to say a few words of thanks to each of the guest performers.
If you love musical theatre, then a cruise with a cruise line such as Disney, Cunard or Royal Caribbean could be a special holiday for you and you will discover that entertainment can be as good as you will see in a theatre in the UK. It will also prove that variety may be dead in regional theatre but on the cruise ships, that is exactly what you get and whatever your musical taste, there is something for you.
You can read more about our experiences of these types of live performances in these articles.
Stage Whispers 11- Every Artist was first an Amateur
Stage Whispers 3 from The Fringe - Nick Wayne
Stage Whispers 12 - Digital Theatre - Nick Wayne
Stage Whispers 16 - All Aboard for Entertainment
Nick Wayne
Nick has been involved as a Trustee/Director in UK Producer and Venue Organisations for twenty-six years, seen over 1350 productions, visited over 160 of the UK Venues, seen overseas productions in USA, Canada, France, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and Australia and invested in over 40 West End Productions. You can read his long form articles on Stage Whispers UK - Nick Wayne