In the interwar period, amateur drama was actively promoted as a means to create or repair, sustain and develop community consciousness in English villages. In this article, Mick Wallis maps such promotion across various fields of practice at their intersection with the village drama ‘movement’ as a field itself. These include gentry patronage, post-war and rural reconstruction, adult education, and women’s self-advancement. He also charts the emergence of interwar village drama from its precursors since 1900, and the emergence from it of the system of local government Drama Advisers that persisted until the 1990s. Time and again, drama is presented as a vital tool in the improvement of the lives of individuals, the development of national citizens, and the restoration and celebration of local communities. Finally, he suggests the important insights that this work can offer future researchers. Mick Wallis is Professor Emeritus of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds.

在两次世界大战期间，业余戏剧被积极推广，作为在英国乡村创造或修复、维持和发展社区意识的一种手段。在这篇文章中，米克·沃利斯在与乡村戏剧“运动”作为一个领域本身的交汇处将这种推广映射到各个实践领域。其中包括绅士赞助、战后和农村重建、成人教育和女性自我提升。他还描绘了自 1900 年以来两次大战间乡村戏剧的出现，以及一直持续到 1990 年代的地方政府戏剧顾问系统的出现。戏剧一次又一次地被视为改善个人生活、国家公民发展以及恢复和庆祝当地社区的重要工具。最后，他提出了这项工作可以为未来的研究人员提供的重要见解。Mick Wallis 是利兹大学表演与文化荣誉教授。