During the last twenty years the number of community plays has grown enormously in Scandinavia and Great Britain. In Denmark, on average, some twenty new plays are produced annually. From the early 1970s to 1993, I have registered more than 300 Danish productions; these include about sixty of the 140 plays which celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of abolition of adscription in 1988. ‘Community plays’ are known by a number of different names. In Scandinavia they are called ‘lokalspil’, ‘egnsspil’, ‘bygdespel’, ‘krönikespel’, ‘arbetarspel’, and so on. It is important to distinguish ‘community theatre’ from ‘community play’. Community theatre is any kind of performance organized by ordinary people in a given area with or without support from theatre professionals. It may be totally amateur or it may include professional guest performances by theatre practitioners from outside the area.