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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Theatre: dead?

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:04 / 06.07.01

It's been commented elsewhere that there's a paucity of threads on theatre on Barbelith. So, to remedy this, it's worth asking why this is - why is it that people feel the need to talk about television and film with great analytical tones, but not so much theatre - be it performances or texts? This begs a second question, I suppose - is theatre dead, in terms of being the large-scale popular pursuit that tv/film both are? Has it become marginalised to such an extent that it's only the stage-show-loving crowds (or, in the West End's case, tourists) that bother to turn up to theatres, if only to watch Monolithic and Grand Old Favourites? Or is the theatre scene still alive and kicking - but in need of more PR, more popular awareness?

I don't see as much theatre as I would like to, and I feel guilty about that. This guilt is something I don't feel when I miss a film or a TV show - so I can't quite discern whether it affects my attendance or not.

Thoughts?

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:46 / 06.07.01

(moved from 'dead from the' thread.)

Think you're unlikely to think other people will have seen the thing you're going on about. Patently not the case with Big Brother or Tomb Raider...

For various reasons, eg its a minority artform compared to TV/film (but a massive one compared to visual art. go figure)

Also the live element is mixed with this, it seems to me a bit pointless comparing different productions of the same piece if neither of you have seen the other. unless you think you can really encapsulate eveything about the 'king lear' you saw, for example.

And so it depends to an extent on geographical closness. eg a bunch of theatre freaks in london are likely to have seen similar stuff. Which is a bit of an odd factor to have to consider on a bulletin board with people from at least 4 continents. on it

And do wish people didn't feel they 'ought' to go to the theatre. guaranteed to kill excitement and engagement with anything if it feels like homework/ something to prove how cultured you are.

14:41 / 06.07.01

Theatre is dead. At least the form of the play is dead. Only theatre people go to see theatre. Art is supposed to reach and affect the masses. Mass media does that. Whiney productions of "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea" and "'Night Mother" reach nobody. Ever!

I went to see a production of "Keely and Du" recently. The only reason I went was because my friends were doing it. It had something very important to say about abortion and a woman's right to choice. I looked around and (imagine that) the theatre was filled with liberal, artist types, and I would bet all the money I will ever make that there was not a single pro-lifer in the bunch. What was the point of doing the show then? Why do theatre if all you do is show off to your peers how well you recite your opinions?

The genius of Brecht was 'Bait and Switch'. Appeal to the masses with flash and music and spectacle, and give them some truth when they're not looking. These pussy-ass little shmactors that litter the stages of the world, prancing around feeling and emoting and expressing never bothered to learn this. Your art is not for the arts community. It is for the world. You need to take it to the world. You need to disguise it in a way that the crowd wants it and won't realize it's hearing something new and risky.

Milktoast theatre pussies need to throw away the 'play' and the 'story' and move on to the live performances that really make Joe Lunchbox turn his head: Circuses, sporting events, rocks shows, public executions, riots, freak shows, and (here's the self serving part) comedy shows with obscene humor and hard alcohol and gratuitous nudity. Art needs to be bloodthirsty. If it's not, you may as well be going to church.

16:08 / 06.07.01

From the Dangling Conversation, Simon and Garfunkel, at least 30 years ago (think it was '68, but I'm probably wrong...)
Yes, we speak of things that matter,With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theatre really dead?"

I'd say that report's of the theatre's demise have been greatly exaggerated, and that it will be with us for some time to come.

But I'd definitely say that it needs a bit of a PR jolt to it. Many people look on it as something 'not for them', but their attitudes can change. Look at what happened when Kelly Brook did that turn as a lapdancer in the West End, or when Kidman appeared in the Blue Room, or any one of about five actressess played Mrs Robinson in The Graduate - it got covered by all the tabloids and a lot of the broadsheets, and most of the shows sold out straight away.

I'm not suggesting, by any means, that theatre should just have a tits-oot style reaction to PR, just pointing out that, when given a different angle, people didn't view it as something they 'had' to do.

Oh and Corvus - 'only theatre people go to see theatre '? Isn't that self-evident? Or are you defining a certain group of people who act in a way as theatre people (which I'm fairly sure you are.)

If so, who are 'theatre people?'

08:10 / 09.07.01

Rambling...

I'd agree with CorvusB that "the form of the play is dead". But I'd also agree with plumsbitch (on the Sarah Kane thread) that there are certainly things theatre can do that film & TV can't - which are to do with the use of the space mostly (perhaps it's interesting that, eg, "surround sound" in cinemas could be seen as an attempt to replicate theatre-space?)

F'rex: there's a couple of duets in "Kiss of the Spider Woman" where the space of the music and the harmonies is completely different from the 'real' space of the theatre (ie, Valentin is singing a duet with his girlfriend who is miles away and months in the past). The closest you get to that in film/TV is the "two people looking out of a window at the rain while a sad song plays" thing, which doesn't have the same effect at all. Theatre could be an excellent way of fucking with space, time, conventions... but most of the stuff I see there is just horribly boring and literal. Even when it goes a bit metaphorical, it's still really "literal" metaphors.

Eg: Jane Eyre at the Yorkshire Playhouse a year or so ago, where it starts off with two Jane Eyres, one in grey and one in red. When Jane's put in the Red Room, Red Jane stays there for the rest of the play and becomes Mr Rochester's mad wife - and flollops about madly whenever Grey Jane gets cross. I hated it: partly because it was such a literal metaphor (the whole play/book is *about* the connections between Jane/Bertha and you shouldn't need to shove such a huge image of that in the audience's face, it wears away all the subtler and more interesting things theatre-space could do. Think of 'The Lost Highway', which uses film-space/conventions to do much the same thing, but far, oh far more interestingly). A lot of "mainstream" play-based theatre is not trying to change the theatrical apparatus and what can be done in theatre (which was Brecht's credo at one point: that if productions are just "supplying the bourgeois apparatus of the theatre with material" then what the hell's the point?)

And I was really depressed when I was an undergraduate and all the undergrad drama was shit like "educating rita". For fucksake. (Hey kids! We have freedom, funding and enthusiasm! Let's put on a play that was considered groundbreaking 30 years ago!)

Okay, well I warned you I was rambling.

wembley can change in 28 days

13:36 / 11.07.01

The form of the play is not dead. The form of the play is not dead. The form of the play is not dead.

Here's why: there are (according to most peoeple) two elements that make up theatre: 1) performer 2) audience. The rest is details. Some people could even reduce it to exclude the performer, but I think that gets mighty close to an art installation. Take away the audience, and it's not theatre, it's therapy. A play is play. There's nothing dead about play.

The idea that art is supposed to reach the masses is ridiculous. Art is supposed to communicate - but it doesn't have to reach the whole world at the same time. The global village, it's true, is well cared for by film, music, literature, and the internet, and to some extent television and radio. Theatre is never going to be a global medium, because the whole point of theatre is the immediacy of attendance and performance. Possibly the only shows that are truly global are Lloyd Webber's crapola - Cats, for instance, at this point cannot be reinterpreted according to copyright. It is necessary to cast people of certain size in all the roles, use the same costumes, makeup, choreography, etc, which means someone in Tokyo sees the same Cats as in New York.

If you think theatre is for pussies, you're probably seeing crap theatre designed for the blue-rinse crowd. Rest assured, every day a non-pussy director is asking a non-pussy actor to do something most of us wouldn't have the courage to do in front of other people. I've seen theatre that is more challenging than experimental film, and it's great stuff! Why don't people go? I don't know...either they're perfectly happy with their mass media schlop, or they're scared of the artsiness of theatre, afraid they won't get it.

Brecht, on the other hand, is dead. It's really difficult to stage Brecht anymore, and certainly if Brecht were around now he couldn't write the way he used to. The devices of his theatre are still fantastic - removing the illusion of theatre, exposing the character as an actor, etc - but his theatre always teaches a lesson, which implies there is a right and wrong way to talk politics, and you just can't do that anymore ... postmodernism sucks, yeah.

Veering quickly off-topic, crash landing here at the soft bottom of the post.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:38 / 22.05.02

The idea that art is supposed to reach the masses is ridiculous.

The idea that it's not is ludicrous. Theatre has a long history of being popular. It's only recently that it's become an expensive diversion.

The question is, what can or should Theatre be about, to capture the mind of the wider audience. Can Theatre challenge, educate, and be popular, or is it only capable of reaching everyone if it appeals to the lowest common denominator?

Playwrite Athol Fougard is pretty high-flown, but at the same time he's universally relevant. The recent performance of "The Island" in London was attended by a wide and disparate audience. Had it gone to the smaller theatres around London, I doubt it would have bombed.

The idea that you can no longer stage Brecht is extraordinary. Relativism only finds a grip if everyone kowtows. Is that what you intend?

autopilot disengaged

10:00 / 09.06.02

this thread: dead?

...and that's exactly how quick virtually any medium can come back from a fallow period - with the right piece, a climate shift, whatever.