by Walk into Leicester’s Curve theater and you might think gravity is playing tricks on you. “You’ll just be walking and you’ll see someone spinning on their head,” says Jim who often comes across break dancers practicing in the foyer. “Every time I walk by, they say, ‘Do you want to try it?'” He shook his head. “I pull a muscle just looking at them!”
Jim, 64, has been volunteering with Curve for four years, checking tickets, giving directions and helping people to their seats. “The show starts as soon as they walk in the door,” he says warmly. “I know you can make someone’s day by having a smile.” Across the country, theaters are brightened and strengthened by volunteers like him, an often under-celebrated group of individuals who give their time, effort and energy for free.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” says Lizzie Owen, 45, who is one of 15 volunteers at Curve. “I’ve loved theater since I was a child, but as a wheelchair user, a career in theater wasn’t really possible back then.” Volunteering brought out skills she didn’t know she had. “I thought it would be hard for me to talk to people I didn’t know,” she says, “but there’s something about being here. I feel lighter, I’m more confident, and I can talk to anyone.” This generosity seems to be baked into the building. During the pandemic, Curve’s artistic director, Nikolai Foster, became a volunteer vaccinator, protecting the community and the dark ranks.
A theater belongs to the people who make it more than a building. That includes the volunteers as much as it does the stars, the crew and the audience. Jim and Lizzie describe volunteering as a mutually beneficial experience; in exchange for skills and will, a well-run cinema can restore a vibrant sense of belonging. “It’s so friendly here,” declares 78-year-old Pete Brookes, who wears a T-shirt declaring he is Battersea Arts Centre’s longest-serving volunteer. “They seem to pick the right people.” He taps the table in a bright office at the top of the theater. “There were only a few people I didn’t like,” he says, “but they got rid of them.”
For more than two decades, Pete and his wife Joan have helped out at BAC together, having visited the building since the 1970s. They aged paper in coffee for Punchdrunk, lit fires, fed Pluto’s resident cat, worked front of house, and wrote letters to save the building when it was in danger of being closed. In 2008, they were presented with an award at Wandsworth Town Hall. A framed dedication to Joan, who died in 2021, is located right next to the old town hall.
After the devastating fire in 2015, which severely damaged much of the Great Hall, volunteers played an extraordinary role in BAC’s recovery. Support piled in from the local community, offering space, equipment, and time. “It’s not about the money,” then art director David Jubb wrote in the weeks after the fire. “It was about your acts of kindness, it was about you volunteering time. Our recovery is yours.”
Volunteering is not just an activity for later life. For the past two years, Chanté Frazer, 28 years old and Diogo Varela, 24 years old, both actors, have been supporting the Talawa theater company as young trustees. Varela applied for the role eager to learn more about the theater’s registration but was unclear about what being a trustee would entail. “In the first board meeting I didn’t understand most of what was going on,” he admits. But over time he has grown in confidence, knowledge and skill. “It allows me to grow a lot as an artist.” Besides, he says, he likes to let anyone else know what shows are on.
Talawa champions Black theatre, with a focus on work from the Caribbean diaspora. “A lot of our community doesn’t feel like we have access to the theater,” says Chanté, “partly because of the price tag, and partly because some people don’t feel like they see people in the theater who look like them. What Talawa is doing is breaking the stigma, to help people understand that theater is accessible to us too.” As young trustees, she and Diogo have a hand in influencing the theatre’s marketing, the types of stories they tell and the growth of their audience. “Of course being a volunteer is not paid, so it’s a choice,” says Chanté, “but the reward you get is the knowledge, confidence and voice you have. Being a trustee helps you take center stage.” Diogo agrees: “It’s an exchange of energy and knowledge … and free tickets! What more could you want?”
While organizations such as Curve, BAC and Talawa are supported by volunteers, others are completely dependent on them. When 81-year-old Jan Bland moved house, the first thing she did was find a local theater to go to. Fifty years later, she is one of the longest serving members of the Harborough Theatre, a space run entirely by voluntary members. “I’ve done almost everything here,” says Jan proudly, before I hear almost every other volunteer repeat: “It’s almost like a second home.” If we give a building enough time, it seems to work its way into our bones, becoming much more than a stage for other people’s stories.
Ten years after Jan, Marilyn and Ralph Holderness turned up at the Harborough theatre. Their two young daughters wanted to be in the pantomime, so Marilyn was dragged with them for two weeks as an usher. When they wanted to do it again the following year, Ralph insisted that he would not be left sitting at home. “So you came over and asked if anyone backstage needed help,” says Marilyn to her husband, who nods. “That was the beginning of my apprenticeship,” he says. Year three, and Marilyn, a former hairdresser, quits her chaperoning job to join Ralph as stage manager. “We called it A Team,” she laughed. He is now 80 and she is 76 years old. They are still an integral part of the Harborough theatre, stage managing, front of house and generally joking around.
Between the three of them, they’ve seen and done it all: Ralph has made endless things fall off walls and Marilyn has been rear-ended by both a camel and a dragon. They also met people from all walks of life. “I had a couple of takers in a play I was directing,” recalls Jan, who is still teaching. “They seem to have learned their lines by ear.” The team continues to sell out most shows in their 115 seat theatre. Performances take place for a week every day except Monday, when there is bell practice in the church next door.
It’s not just about the plays. At Curve, Jim recently helped with stages in the theatre, and this Christmas Day Pete volunteered at BAC when the building opened for a community meal. “It was beautiful,” he says. “They laid out the tables like a feast, they just piled the meals up.” Anyone was welcome as long as their name was on the list. Even then, he whispered, they didn’t turn anyone away.
Theaters are very fortunate to benefit from the generosity of volunteers across the country, these good neighbors who help above all with love. But having the right support structures in place can bring these buildings back in spades. With friendships, love stories and increased self-confidence over years of volunteer service, the walls are woven with meaning and memories. “You take so much and you can also give so much,” declares Diogo.
But from what they all say, volunteering should be undertaken with caution; Once you’re in, it seems very difficult to get out. “I’ll be here as long as I’m useful,” cried Jim eagerly. Lizzie wholeheartedly agrees. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.” Pete has lived directly across the road from BAC for four decades. After three years of living there without Joan, he has decided to move on to somewhere new. “But I don’t want to be too long,” he says, setting the table, “because I don’t want to leave this place.”
