BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Amateur hour: culture, capital, and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages initiative

    Flynn, Molly (2017) Amateur hour: culture, capital, and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages initiative. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 22 (4), pp. 482-499. ISSN 1356-9783.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    In 2011, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) began a series of collaborations with established amateur theatre groups from across the UK. The initiative now known as Open Stages became one of the most ambitious educational outreach programmes ever run by the RSC, engaging hundreds of amateur theatre practitioners in a process of skills sharing and knowledge exchange. This article analyses the significance of the RSC’s Open Stages initiative and illustrates how the programme’s practical components were underpinned by an important reallocation of cultural capital from the RSC to their amateur partners. Reciprocally, this article explores what the RSC stood to gain from collaborating with amateur theatre-makers and thereby seeks to challenge the traditional hierarchy of professional vs. amateur theatre in twenty-first-century British culture.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Amateur, Shakespeare, RSC, performance, community
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 12 Jan 2018 10:03
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:42
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/19588

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    307Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item