Are Membership Fees in Amateur/Community Theatre simply to get your money?

-Often when you do a Community/Amateur Theatre show they ask a Membership Fee from you.

Which I often put off paying 'cause I figure:

A. There are craftsman that do get paid eg: Director, Set Construction, Writer etc.

B. They're making money off your performance each night the show runs.



Though lately I've heard the terms "it's for your benefit, if anything happens to you onstage you're covered by insurance". However if something did happen to you, eg. say you fall on one of their set pieces and break your leg - aren't you covered by public liability anyway? If you broke your leg, had to go to hospital and they refused to pay, couldn't you sue them for it?



I'm not in the habit of taking people to court and (knock on wood) I don't regularly injure myself onstage - though as an Actor I'm not a big fan of paying for my performance while someone else is making money from it, either.



What do you think?that IS a pretty good conspiracy theory, it made me think. Usually my theatre doesn't use that excuse but they are non-profit so everything we fork up goes back into the show. it sounds like your theatre is more "professional" than mine. The reason they give you sounds totally fake, but i do know of other theatres that make you pay to be in a production
The company I'm part of charges 拢100 per show. But then they have to pay to hire rehearsal space, money for the director/MD/choreographer/techies then also cost of sets and costume. Plus theatre hire and show royalties then insurance so yeah it's alot of money but then its a good quality production and I get alot out of then.



There are alot of scam companies. Amateur theatre doesn't make money so you have to pay to be in it. There are no hard and fast rules as to how much they charge but this doesn't always correlate to the quality of the show. Just do the research into the company!