Well, it’s nearly here.

As I anticipate the madness of tech and dress rehearsals over the next couple of days, and the anxiety of opening night, I find myself reflecting on the nature of different types of theatre. This is not a professional production, though I hope I hold myself and my lovely actors and techies to a professional standard.

It’s that standard that I wonder about. With amateur theatre, of course, people are doing it for love and for fun, not because it’s their job. As both a director and an actor, I wouldn’t begin to know how to separate the two. I don’t know how to do anything without trying to make it the best it can be – and I think there’s a real shame in the snobbery that insists that things aren’t likely to be good if they aren’t expensive. That’s the same mentality that assumes only Oxbridge types are sufficiently equipped to run or do anything. It’s the same mentality that thinks since nurses get paid less than doctors they must be less important or less skilled.

No, money is rarely a good reflection of true value.

With art in particular, what makes something good (or not) is passion and dedication. This affects amateur theatre when it comes to time and energy. Everyone involved in this play has other, admittedly more important things to do – we have jobs and/or families that require our attention, and of course must take priority. This doesn’t mean that amateur productions are destined to be half-assed, only that there is more to contend with.

I was speaking with a friend (and fellow director and actor) yesterday, at another amateur production. Over the course of our conversation, I wondered if perhaps the standard to which I held my actors and crew was too high, too demanding, for the world we were in. The people involved are doing this for no other reward than the task itself – is it unkind to push them, to expect as much of them as I would of professionals?

From my earlier directing experiences with this particular company, I have found it rewarding, though certainly difficult, to help less-trained performers do professional quality work. I have also found a significant amount of push-back from people who find my methods too stringent – I’m sure they don’t necessarily realise all the implications, but the take-away message from those complaining is that what I’m asking is too hard, and I’m not letting them relax and have (enough) fun. (I must defend myself somewhat; people are not despondent and enslaved to some maniacal obsessive, there is plenty of laughter in my rehearsals, but I don’t settle).

So then the question becomes, is it right to hold an amateur team to lower standards, to push them less, to train them less, so that the process overall feels less intense – or does that do them a disservice, knowing that when the show arrives, the result will be merely adequate?

What is the super-objective?

I work, or have done so far, holding to the idea that the whole point is to push for excellence, to push people out of their comfort zone and make them reach for things they didn’t necessarily think they could, or even should, do. I believe the best theatre happens when people are striving.

But is it wrong to try to get the ‘best theatre’ from amateurs? I don’t know. I don’t know that I could change my style even should I decide it would be morally correct. For me, pushing myself, working hard at theatre, while challenging, isn’t unpleasant – it’s the bit that I like. Work and play, for me, are the same. I get the impression from some that I work with, that is not necessarily the case for all.

For this play, of course, the rehearsal period is almost finished, and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

But for the future, the question remains. How much should one manage expectations; how hard do you push?