Amateur Theatre

Amateur Theatre in Switzerland

Amateur theatre is highly valued in Switzerland. While theatre with amateur actors is rooted in the religious traditions of the Middle Ages, the specific tradition of amateur theatre developed from the end of the 19th century. Primarily in rural regions, but also in growing urban areas and cities, those eager to perform formed local and supra-regional associations. In 1906, the Central Association of Swiss Popular Theatre (ZSV) was founded, followed in 1926 by the Fédération Suisse Romande des sociétés de Théâtre d’Amateurs, later known as FSSTA (Fédération Suisse des Sociétés Théâtrales d’Amateur). In the 1980s, the Union grischuna per il teater popular (UTP) and the Ticinese Federazione Filodrammatiche della Svizzera Italiana (FFSI) joined them. In 2022, the four associations founded the nationwide umbrella organisation Theater Amateure Schweiz (TAS), and federal statistics recorded at least 774 amateur theatre groups for the year 2019.

Amateur theatre is often among Switzerland's most popular events, with examples such as the Tellspiele or the Einsiedeln World Theatre. Amateur theatre encompasses a wide variety of forms, ranging from demanding open-air plays, professionally directed and enhanced by numerous professional performers, that have a supra-regional appeal, to local dialect farces. It specifically engages with students or seniors and draws inspiration from both professional repertoire and dialect plays by regional dialect authors.  

Photo album of the Berner Heimatschutztheater, SAPA Foundation collection.

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SAPA and the ZSV

In 1984, Peter E. Wüthrich and Jean-Michel With, two dedicated ZSV members, approached the then Swiss Theatre Collection (STS), SAPA's predecessor institution, with the desire to collect and preserve the abundant documentation material. This collection laid the foundation for building an amateur theatre repertoire; a (today) FileMaker-based database that records the productions of amateur theatre groups. While ZSV encourages its members to collect promotional materials such as flyers – currently still in paper form – and also employs a staff member at SAPA responsible for data entry into the database, SAPA handles the provision of the delivered materials, their conservation, and archiving. This is a win-win situation that is currently to be put on a new footing.

Sources on Amateur Theatre at SAPA

The collection of press texts and program booklets, which provides the basic information for the aforementioned database on amateur theatre, dates back to the early 20th century. Furthermore, SAPA houses the Swiss Theatre Lexicon TLS, which contains numerous articles on supra-regional associations, as well as on individual local groups and societies. In addition, SAPA has a small archive collection on the subject and offers advisory services and other support to all members of theatre associations and other enthusiastic performers.