The amateur – the one who loves is an assay about the conditions of existence for
amateur theatre in the region of Västerbotten, Sweden. During the last 20-
something years the number of active amateur theatre-companies has gone from
being a well-established form of cultural expression to being absent in the majority
of the Västerbotten-communities. The purpose of this essay has been to
understand why the people who are still active amateur theatre-performers-and-
(volunteer)workers is interested in this form of art and which kinds of conditions
of existence matters and enables these people to live their amateur theatre-lives.
To be able to answer to this purpose it has been important to meet and speak to
people from different parts of Västerbotten, why the study is multisited with
shorter visits to several different places. By doing so, I have interviewed 12 people
who still are, or used to be, engaged in amateur theatre, and I also visited three
different amateur theatre companies to observe while they were rehearsing.
Theoretically, the starting point has been the term culture and cultural theories
such as a gleaning from Pierre Bourdieu's theories of practice where field,
conditions of existence, habitus and symbolic capital has been identified in the
empirical material and clarified with the help of feeling-work from Erin Hurley
and orientation from Sarah Ahmed. The results have shown that the participants
who has been interviewed all have (or used to have) three things in common: a
great passion and love for the arts, an urge for self-realization and a longing to be
part of a field or community of practise. But depending on where you live and
where you come from, your conditions of existence differ quite a lot - even within
the region of Västerbotten.
2023.
amateur theatre, conditions of existens, symbolic capital, time, feeling-work