Monday, October 01, 2007
Is staging life online virtually impossible?
Guardian Unlimited: "Shakespeare had it easy. He lived in inherently stageable times: people lived in communities; were largely illiterate and so communicated through speech. They did not possess telephones, television sets, or spend hours listening to iPods. In short, their lives make for easy and dramatic representation. There was no need to agonise over how to present the way that people communicated with one another because it was patently obvious - they'd stand within earshot and speak or shout. No need for split stages showing both halves of a phone call; and no deadly pauses while a naturalistic hero/heroine reads a long email. No wonder so many dramatists get drawn to historical subjects."
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3 comments:
This is a point that I never really though/worried about before. I do see how presenting modern methods of communication could be challenging in a typical theatre, but there is definitely a huge number of new ways to comunicate with an audience that this allows. Maybe one day your PDA, cell phone, etc. will be a vital part of a show while you receive messages vital to the plot.
With growth in technology and communication, there is a possibility for new conventions to be created to allow modern day events to happen on the stage. The problem, whatever the convention, is to keep the audience focused where you want them to be focused. If that can be done with a message sent to your PDA, more power to ya.
It is certainly difficult to portray something with the magnitude of the internet on a definite space such as a stage. There are a few things that are easy, like instant messaging and chat rooms...but there are definitely some aspects that are just to grandiose, or just don't really have a place on the stage at the moment, like online gaming.
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