This book proposes a revision of 19th-century theatre history and examines the contribution of amateur theatre practice to European theatre, by shifting the focus to theatre as a cultural, social and aesthetic practice.
Non-professional theatre practice has been largely neglected due to deeply rooted prejudice about its aesthetic standards: a prejudice whose origins can be traced back to influential thinkers in the 18th century. Although it was a massive phenomenon in Europe around 1800, amateur theatre has been overshadowed by professional theatre through a privileging of literary and canonical perspectives in the writing of history. This book argues that amateur theatricals contributed to mainstreaming key concepts of aesthetic education and identity building, as well as establishing educative and aesthetic concepts of bourgeois theatre.