What It Means to Be an All-Volunteer Community Theatre
Community theatre in action by Elizabeth Hunter, Artistic Director One of the defining policies of Theatre@First is that we are an all-volunteer community theatre. No one gets paid to work with us. Not our actors, not our production staff, not our crew, and most especially not the Artistic Director. No one pays to work with us, either. We do not have membership dues, or costume fees. While we love it when our participants sell program ads, or fill our audiences with ticket-buying friends and family, there is no requirement or minimum. This policy has some disadvantages, of course. There are plenty of people who love theatre and make their living at it, which we respect and support. And there are people who feel that all theatre work should be paid, or that they cannot afford to devote so much of their time to non-paying endeavors. We miss out on working with those individuals. We have no leverage, other than the pleasure we offer of creating theatre in community, for enc