Open Stages is Britain's biggest amateur theatre project, a hugely ambitious scheme to bring the professional and amateur theatre worlds together. It is a learning project but, as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Ian Wainwright tells this author, it is not only the amateurs who are learning. Wainwright states that the amateur and professional theatre worlds have grown apart over quite a long period of time. This project is about changing that course and bringing people back together. Open Stages represents an unprecedented collaboration, involving the RSC and Voluntary Arts, regional and national theatres, national amateur theatre umbrella bodies and amateur theatre groups from across the UK. As the Royal Shakespeare Company marks its fiftieth birthday, amateur companies from every corner of the country are preparing their own Shakespeare-themed productions, in community centres, village halls, disused swimming pools, and ruined castles, with almost 300 taking place in 2011 and 2012 under the Open Stages banner. One of the key ideas that Wainwright wants to impress through this project is that theatre belongs to everyone.