All the world’s a stage, not a movie set
October 15, 2002
The lights go down on the audience. The crowd hushes in anticipation of the show. Patrons grip programs in lieu of popcorn. A live orchestra stands ready to add a palpable score to the performance. And instead of a gargantuan movie screen lowering into the beam of a focused projector, a curtain ascends, baring a stage with little more than sparse, dark wood furniture and a vintage throw rug. A moving, breathing human being struts out into the spotlight. This is the theater, folks, a live-action movie where a 35-foot stage replaces 35-mm film as its necessary medium.
People often neglect the theater as viable entertainment. While films gross millions of dollars a week, most plays, especially local shows, are lucky to break even. There’s an aversion to theater, the performing art that has existed since ancient Greece, while film, a medium just 80 years old, saturates the mainstream as the norm.
Availability is one barrier. Every suburban teen can find his or her way into a movie theater once a week to take in the latest blockbuster. However, you can’t mass-produce a theater show. While a single movie may run six times in a day, plays and musicals are lucky to run three times in one weekend, and one weekend only. But even when a play is readily available, people tend to shy away, opting for the comfort of the Cineplex. It’s quite fashionable to say, yes, I’m attending the theater this weekend, but to actually follow through is an amazing feat of high culture, or so we think.
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Is it true that Americans are uncultured and so gravitate toward the mainstream cinema? I doubt it, as low-brow, high school theater is much less elite than a well-produced indie film. But I recommend supporting the amateur play or musical. Think of it as a philanthropic effort. You think it’s charitable to see Goldmember? And although your typical student may not yet be as talented as the illustrious Mike Myers, he’ll appreciate your attendance; Mr. Myers wouldn’t know the difference.
Some people say movies are more intense, with their special effects and surround sound to stimulate the senses. I’d disagree with that too, arguing that plays are more intense than any movie. The actors are within your grasp, so close you could spit on them (although it’s not recommended), displaying their emotions in your face, unabashed and real. Meanwhile a film is edited down to its cleanest cuts, the director’s perfection, and plastered onto a flatscreen in all its 2D glory.
Here’s what you have to respect about the theater – it’s a one-shot deal. Film, you can retake that a 150 times, and then choose one of those 150 takes to keep forever as part of your finished product. In theater, you can practice a scene one hundred and fifty times, but you only get one chance to make it public and perfect at once. And thanks to the innate flaws of man, your public take isn’t always your finest.
Films become outdated, they hit theaters, they hit video stores, they hit HBO – and unless somebody’s releasing a 25th anniversary special edition DVD, that film’s shelf life runs out. How long have we been reissuing Shakespearean plays? For 400 years Shakespeare has occupied the stages of thousands of theater companies worldwide. Every week a new cast in a new theater is performing a Shakespearean play. That’s a powerful statement that not even Stephen Spielberg can make with all the promotions
in the world. So when next faced with the decision, Kingpin versus
King Lear, try your hand at a live production; the actors won’t bite … as far as I know.
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