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| .... What difference? |
Being the argumentative type that I am, I've engaged in many a conversation about the nature of Theatre and what it should or shouldn't be. While most of these discussion are quite fruitful and benign, (Artaud vs Brecht notwithstanding) there is one topic I've heard time and again that boils my blood like an angry walrus.
The subject rears it's belligerent posterior when a theatre maker is trying to justify some sort of artistic decision or criticize the decisions of another. "What really needs to happen..." they begin, their chins raised high as pious templar of the theatrical religion, "Is that theatre needs to find ways to distinguish itself from film!" At which point I get the primordial urge to throw something heavy or bite somebody.
Of course, anyone who's seen a Film Noir knows that actors onscreen can talk plenty well to an audience, and I'd wager "Star Wars" has created a community larger than the entire American theatre community combined,but I digress...
The best part about any artistic medium is it's ability to innovate, and that includes the power to borrow, learn from, and use the toolkit of any other artistic medium. We would have nothing to gain from becoming the Académie Française, forced to preserve the purity of "Theatre" with a capital "T"
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| Although the costumes would be rather fabulous... |
As someone who studies narrative structure, the first difference between theatre and film that stood out to me was the difference in plot. Plays begin with a static world, introduce an element that disrupts the status quo of that world (usually a character but not always), and end with a resolution which creates a new stasis, for better or for worse. Movie plots tend revolve around single character (or pair of characters in the case of a buddy movie) going through a Joseph-Cambellian Hero's Journey, complete with a call to action, helpers, descent into the underworld, and so on. (This is also the plot structure of the oral storytelling tradition, but that's another topic for another day)
This plot distinction has to do with the fact that in film the point of view is very limited, so the camera needs to follow something (like a main character) in order to maintain it's logic. As for a play, although the set may change, the theatre space is entirely consistent, and it's up to the characters to find a way to inhabit, change or "get along", as director Anne Bogart would say, in the world of that space. (I think the changing nature of a distinct area is why they refer to battle zones as "Theatres of War" but once again, I digress...)
So perhaps there's the distinction we've all been searching for. Thankfully for a writer like me, all I need to worry about is whether I'm writing italicized stage directions or INT. HYDROELECTRIC DAM - NIGHT. I don't think that Martin Mcdonagh should be rebuked for incorporating massive amounts of gunplay, and other artistic elements into his plays first thought up by filmmakers, nor do I think Quentin Tarantino should be held in contempt for having long, drawn-out 'theatrical' conversations in his movies.
Art is not auto insurance. Perhaps in some ways it is like auto insurance in that they both involve Dennis Dexter Haysbert but, as I mentioned before, theatre and film both strive to do the same thing: Tell stories. Since their ultimate aims are tantamount, fretting over distinction can only serve to detract from the overall goal of both mediums.
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| A uniting force. |
Not that there's anything wrong with homemaking and/or laundry detergents... Except Arm and Hammer. That stuff itches, man...
heehee, theater eugenicists...
ReplyDeleteI'd argue that the "community" aspect to theater can be given much more credence. In fact, I still think that's the defining factor in what puts theater into a completely different category as film. I definitely won't dispute the power of Star Wars to unite legions of devout fanatics across all seven continents, but were all those people sitting in one place at one time while they watched Star Wars together for the first time? And were the actors there too? Nope. Star Wars fans share an interest, not a mutual experience. The power of the theatrical experience still lies in the fact that it exists only in the NOW, and therefore brings people together in the NOW. Film is an object. Not a connection between people in the present.
Although I've never been to a Star Wars convention, I can tell you that I have been to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight. Yes the people dressed in costumes, but you could feel the trust and the bonds of everyone in that room. Whatever your definition of community, it was present at that showing, in the lobby, in the theatre, and outside the theatre. The strength of the community was nothing short of vibrant. I don't think I've ever been to a play that has matched that experience.
ReplyDeleteAs for theatre and community, the odd catch-22 I see in most companies is that the people who attend these smaller more intimate plays are already a community in the first place. Great art takes many forms, and when people experiences it together there is community.
I have no problem with actors interacting directly with the audience, in fact I kind of love it, but just because theatre can do it and film cannot is not an adequate justification for its use. By the same token, just because you can fling a CGI fireball during a movie and not during a play doesn't mean all movies have to do so in order to distance themselves from theatre.
I think that, to borrow Emily Gregory's term of "NOW", there exists in Theatre something which can be termed as "NOW-ness". Distinct from Film, Theatre has the capacity, or flexibility, to respond to its audiences. Where Film is an exact replication of itself (distributed in infinite copies), Theatre is an experience which develops in the bond between audience and performers.
ReplyDeleteWhen originated by the Greeks, this bond was developed as a method of connecting its audience to the foibles of present times and a method of revealing insecurities of then contemporary Greece to its audience, who could nod and say "That's right!". But since the invention of film, Theatre lost it's place as the iconographic conception of what is "true". Film, transplanting the place of Theatre, can now cast itself in that role, and further replicating the post-modern consensus of what is "true" can offer many different truths, according to whatever tastes its audience members demand. So film becomes an object, (as Emily Gregory described it), where the audience determines what the truth is (or "Truthiness" -- Bush-isms FTW!!!!!). Which is part and parcel what film can become; Film as product of consumption.
Theatre's purpose has changed as a result of the advent of film. One philosopher (don't ask me his name, I don't remember and am too lazy to look it up--unless continually pestered) described film as the perfect mechanized method of presenting reality, has rendered Theatre's purpose of reflecting "reality" different. Compare this idea with the "realists" of Theatre and the now changing need for Theatre to find a purpose. I think it has found it's purpose in Performance Art. This serves as a kind of response TO FILM.
Where Film is responsive to it's audiences' various tastes, Theatre has a new method of operating similarly.
OK. I think I've rambled on long enough. What do YOU think, Sand-ster?
By observing the ancient theatres such as the Greeks, Sanscrit Dramas and the Noh, we can only conclude that theatre is based around story telling. Perhaps reflecting the anxieties of the day occurred, but the Greeks had plenty of raunchy comedy which went right alongside with their revenge tragedies. The point was to tell stories. There is a certain need within all of us to listen to mythologies, be they real or imagined. Theatre, film and oral storytelling (a form not to be forgetten!) all satiate this need.
ReplyDeleteDo all three of those forms develop a community bond? Sure they do, but if the reason for theatre was community, I wouldn't go to shows where I didn't know anybody nor had any intention of getting to know anybody. And yet I do. Community, though a byproduct of theatre (and occasionally film) is not the point.
In fact, the epitome of bad theatre I see nowadays is based very much around the idea that the community and "non-filmness" of the project supersedes the need for storytelling. There are brilliant directors out there who come up with phenomenal ideas, but unless they serve the story of the play, movie, or spoken tale (yes, some oral storyteller have directors!) they are ultimately doomed to failure.
Your point about reflecting reality is, in my opinion, a tautological artistic goal since all creativity is borrowed from the real world and therefore by definition comments on it.
I will certainly agree that since the advent of film, people can receive their storytelling fix easier, and therefore film is a bit of competition for theatre (just as theatre was competition to oral storytelling!!!), but distancing theatre from its storytelling purpose will destroy the theatre.
As for your point about reacting to the audience, of course you are right. In fact, the Yiddish theatre was well know for in for having multiple endings prepared in order to satiate a particular audience. But these were still STORIES that were being told. And that's my point. It's not that theatre CAN'T do things film can't do, I'm only saying that having distance as a goal is silly and squelches a lot of innovation.
Take Julie Taymor's "The Lion King." It was extremely cinematic, but many elements that could not be used in a film were liberally employed to create the vision. It was (as I'm sure you know) extremely successful. Did Taymor take inspiration from film? Of course, did she take inspiration *not* from film? Of course.
The point of the entire blog can be summarized thusly: Someone who creates theatre does not have to work to distinguish themselves from film because film could do something cool they want to put onstage.
Sander, as a rabid fan of film franchises myself (first in line for every Lord of the Rings movie, in costume for all the Harry Potter movies, etc. I rest my case), I completely agree with you on the power of film fan communities (a power, in fact, that goes beyond what theater could ever do) and didn't mean to come across as bashing on them. I think Joe clarified my point well. It has to do with audience/actor relationship in the present.
ReplyDeleteI think your summary directly above is very apt. And I think (although I confess I'm getting rather muddled) we concluded our opinions well in the facebook spillover:
1.) I agree with you that there shouldn't be some kind of sanctimonious separation between the hallowed forms of film and theater. Far from it, they should draw inspiration from each other. Theater on film especially if it is to survive. This implies a point of competition which maybe you don't acknowledge, but...
2.) that's because I argue a point of competition between theater and film as *forms of entertainment* in addition to forms of art. Whether we like it or not there is an economical competition between the two that is in part responsible for the slow extinction of the former. If theater is to survive, it must defend itself as a justifiable form of entertainment as well as art. Otherwise it will cease to be marketable. I don't think this is a comparison of worth or worthiness (aka which is "better"), but of capitalism. You must make yourself relevant to your audience's pocketbook as well as its intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities. Taking inspiration from film (and allowing/embracing it) is part of this, because what is more culturally relevant in our general public's eye these days than film?
3.) The point I disagree with you on is the all-holds-barred aspect. I believe there should be justification. As a rule I rarely think decisions in playwriting, directing, or design should be done "just because," and in this vein I believe the use of cinematic techniques on stage is *stronger and more effective* when it is done to push the art form and openly challenge it. Like you said, it should work to manifest the story that's being told because that's the most important. I have often found that when there are cinematic elements used in the theater there is actually a much better method more suited to the art form that has been overlooked. I don't say "always," but "often." And this has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the practice as a rule, only the competence and lack of innovation on the artist's part these days. It's often an amateur mistake to "copy" film in the theater only because film is much more present in our lives and upbringing and there's more of a learning curve in understanding what's effective and what isn't on stage. What I don't want to see is theater trying emphatically and completely to be film, because it will only fail in that endeavor (economically mind, not necessarily artistically). That's where the caution and the need for distinction between the two on my part comes from.
The point that Joe argues about realism and performance art I think is a bit tangental from the main point, but one I love dearly to sink my teeth into (as Joe probably knows since I suspect he brought it up to bait me.) :) I think you both know where I stand on that front. I agree with Joe that theatrical *naturalism* (I hold back for realism) is obsolete since the invention of film. However, I agree with Sander that if theater is to stay relevant it can't give up its storytelling aspect. I don't think Performance Art is the answer. In fact, I think it will be dead in another half a century. But this is where the "out of the box" innovation that Sander's talking about comes in. How do we play with forms? How do we challenge what we can put on a stage? Where's the new frontier? Realism itself needs to be redefined. I suspect Sander would argue for spectacle and heightened experience and I would argue (surprise!) for poetry and archetypal story structure.
ReplyDeleteIndeed Emily. It's important to make the distinction between realism, which is a concept theatre employs, and naturalism, which was a theatrical movement largely inspired by scientific objectivism (which, I may add, is over)
ReplyDeleteI actually don't think I disagree with you on your third point. Nothing should be done "just because." I'm only saying that if someone has an idea they want to try for a reason, saying "you can't do that because film already does that" isn't a good enough reason not to employ the hypothetical artistic decision.
I know you loves you some poetry. How would you feel if someone said to you as a director "You can't have poetic dialogue in a play because you should just have a poetry reading since poetry readings are 'better' at poetry?" (don't laugh. I have actually heard this argument many times.)
Although I certainly like the employment of spectacle and heighten experience, using more naturalistic tools (notice how I don't say naturalism) has a place, as does poetry and as does spectacle. Since everyone's tastes are different, it will be impossible to ever decide on the one way theatre "ought" to be, and I hope I'm not coming off for or against any specific theatrical discipline or school of thought in my writing. This diversity of form is what makes theatre is so great. In fact, on of the reasons I like theatre more than film (Gasp!) is because your options for creative decisions can draw upon thousands of years of history and experimentation unlike the more 'genrefied' film, which is a form still very much in its infancy.