Iris Winston. Staging a Legend: A History of Ottawa Little Theatre

Abstract

There is an argument among community theatre practitioners that goes something like this. If the same resources were available to community/amateur theatres as are available to professional theatres, there would be no qualitative difference in the nature of their performances. Indeed, many community theatre companies believe their performances to lack only the critical esteem afforded to those of the professional theatre. They believe that they are marginalized by critics because their performances are prejudged, tainted by the negative connotations of leisure and facility associated with the term amateur. Amateur theatre practitioners, they would argue, participate in the theatre for the sheer love of it. They are not paid like their professional counterparts, but have chosen the security of regular wages in the business world while confining their creative passions to a limited number of hours each evening. Certainly it is the contention of Iris Winston's Staging a Legend: A History of Ottawa Little Theatre that the Ottawa Little Theatre (OLT) provides quality performances which have benefited from, and survived for eighty-four years because of, this arrangement. Furthermore, while living in the shadow of such professional giants as the National Arts Centre and the Great Canadian Theatre Company, the OLT, Staging a Legend argues, by traditionally offering a season of Broadway and West End favourites, consistently pleases its subscribers to such an extent that it never fails to balance its books, an accomplishment its professional counterparts are not always able to achieve. In other words, the OLT, an amateur company, conducts the business of theatre more successfully than its professional rivals. However, Winston shows, that due to a fear of losing its subscriber base, the OLT avoids challenging or difficult material; and, it is for this reason that the OLT rarely presents the work of Canadian playwrights.