What Made You Quit Community Theatre?

by Chris Peterson

I stumbled on a TikTok the other night that asked: What made you quit community theatre?

And whew. The comments did not disappoint.

Time. Burnout. Politics. Directors with God complexes. Boards that think they’re producing Broadway caliber production. Favoritism. Nepotism. Every other “ism”. Toxic rehearsal rooms. “I loved theatre until theatre people ruined theatre” was the general vibe. Honestly? No notes.

Community theatre is supposed to be the fun version. The pure version. The “we do this because we love it” version. And yet somehow, it can still manage to exhaust you in very specific, deeply personal ways.

For me, the answer is annoyingly practical… and then painfully emotional.

Yes, part of it was my job. Travel picked up. A lot. Airports replaced rehearsal halls. Calendars stopped cooperating. There comes a point where you’re looking at a rehearsal schedule thinking, I could maybe make this work if I learn how to teleport. And eventually you stop pretending that’s a sustainable plan.

But if I’m being honest, that’s not the reason I quit. That’s just the reason that sounds nice at parties.

The real reason is the last show I did. It was a bad experience. Not “this wasn’t my favorite role” bad. Not “we were under-rehearsed” bad. The kind of bad that makes you rethink whether you want to put yourself in that position again.

I won’t get into details because, frankly, if you’ve done community theatre long enough, you already know. You’ve felt it. That moment when rehearsal stops being a place you look forward to and starts being something you brace for. When notes feel less like guidance and more like power plays. When the room somehow feels smaller every night instead of bigger.

And here’s the thing that makes community theatre heartbreak hit harder: no one is getting paid enough for this nonsense. We are all volunteers. This is a hobby. There is no paycheck big enough to justify bad behavior, bruised egos, or someone else’s unresolved issues being worked out at the tech table.

At least in professional theatre you can say, “Well, this is my job.” In community theatre, you’re just standing there thinking, I left my house for this?

So I stepped away. Not in a dramatic, burn-it-down way. More like a quiet, “I’m tired, and I don’t feel good here anymore” way. Which, by the way, is still quitting. And it’s still valid.

And quitting doesn’t always mean you failed. Sometimes it means you finally listened to yourself.

I don’t miss everything. I don’t miss meetings about meetings. I don’t miss the tech week chaos that exists solely because no one planned anything. I don’t miss the weird, unspoken politics that somehow exist even when the stakes are literally zero.

But I miss the people. I miss the magic. I miss that rare, electric moment when a group of humans clicks, and you can feel the story land. I miss walking out of a rehearsal thinking, Yeah. That’s why I do this.

Which is why that TikTok didn’t make me defensive. It made me feel seen. Because a lot of us didn’t quit because we stopped loving theatre. We quit because we loved it enough to recognize when it stopped being healthy.

So maybe the more interesting question isn’t what made you quit community theatre. Maybe it’s what would make you come back.

Because I have a feeling a lot of us aren’t done. We’re just waiting for the room to feel safe, joyful, and worth it again.