How does an amateur theatre group overcome inertia within its own membership?
Many of them often have difficulty in persuading people into productions. But even more are faced with the nearimpossibility of getting most of their members to pull their weight off-stage.
For any group so bedevilled, this means it is always scratching around for people to man the bar or the coffee stall, to do front-of-house or help behind the scenes. If the venue is a school or community hall, there is a similar shortage of willing hands to put away the chairs and generally help in tidying up at the end of a production.
Fortunately for the idle and conscience-free, every group seems to have its willing horses and every production sees them flogged unmercifully.
Meanwhile, the membership's parasites and prima donnas - and I'm sorry, I don't know the term for a male prima donna, but I don't want to miss him out - strut their stuff on stage and then swap adulations in the bar. It's as if they're not bright enough to understand that without the unregarded handful who underpin any production, the production would simply not go on.
Somebody's got to flog the tickets. Somebody's got to put the chairs out. Somebody's got to push the raffle that is a vital part of many a group's balance sheet.
Nobody is more aware of this than the groups themselves. As far as I can see, however, most of them fail to respond with anything more useful than hand-wringing.
I know of an exception: BMOS Musical Productions, whose members have to pay £75 if they don't sell more than 15 tickets for a show.
If they sell between 16 and 30 they pay £50, and between 31 and 50 they pay £30. With sales of more than 50, they pay nothing.
It all falls into context in as much as the group's Hippodrome productions cost about £450 to put each member on stage - and usually, even the top payment does not cover an individual's costume bill.
And there's a little theatre that gives points values to various off-stage tasks such as stewarding or manning the bar. The idea is that if you don't have enough points under your belt, you can forget about going on stage.
Alas, although people's points are recorded, it's a sanction that is currently not being applied - which naturally does little to enthuse the loyalists who actually pull their weight.
So, beneath the smiling face of the amateur stage, there is torment and dissent. Perhaps the New Year will find the parasites consumed with contrition and filled with a firm purpose of amendment.
And perhaps pigs will fly.
