While there is a place for professional and trained performers in a folk community, it is the act of refinement and creative change by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process.

But to be fair, Mr. Grillo does have a long résumé of credits, and his elocution and classical posture are evidence of a trained performer.

Helienne Lindvall: Packing the stage with TV discoveries may attract a new audience to the theatre, but is it fair on trained performers?

Prane's voice was rich, resonant, the voice of the trained professional performer.

Like Liz Lerman, with whom Mr. Koplowitz began his career in dance, he uses trained and amateur performers and gives them not just movement but often quite complex texts to speak and sing.

Tatum, even with one arm, was transforming back into a soldier, a trained performer of mayhem.

That's enough to give you an idea of what a trained and polished performer can do.

From 1980 to 1995, she conducted an annual four-month workshop for trained and untrained performers, as a means of developing her own solos.

Because she wants to delve deeper into the possibilities of choreography, Ms. Hay has temporarily suspended the annual workshop to work with trained performers.

No one else had pursued the truth by creating a big film with so few trained performers (138 people picked off the streets, augmented by a single professional actor).