Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Can a filmed stage show be as good as the real thing?
The Observer: "Live theatre is, of necessity, not for the masses. Even London's biggest venues, like ENO's London Coliseum or the Royal Opera House, seat less than 2,500 people each, and the Royal Opera's recent sell-out Anna Nicole or the Royal Ballet's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland only ran for six performances each. With finite inventories of tickets, not only are the prices high but also availability is necessarily limited, and a cycle of elitism is created.
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2 comments:
This was an interesting article, but there are so many factors that can alter how "good" the experience is. As the article stated, watching a show in a darkened theater is much different than watching it on screen with up-close shots and edits and such. But I don't necessarily think that the experience is better simply because you're seeing it a legitimate theater. There have been instances like when Avenue Q played at a 3000-seat theater, and it left me cold. But I saw the show on another occasion in the front row, and it was much more engaging (as expected), and I was thoroughly engrossed by the PBS broadcast of The Light in the Piazza few years ago. Granted, I think that theater is obviously best experienced in a theater venue; however filmed performances can definitely add a different perspective. If a show is completely sold out or if the only tickets that are left are horrible seats 20 miles from the stage, I think I'd go see the filmed performance.
No.
I think what makes theater so exciting is what happens between the people involved. You loose yourself in the audience during a great show. You are no longer an individual but part of a crowd or mob mentality. How many times has a distracting audience member (crying baby, cougher, snorer, candy unwrapper, texter) taking you "out" of the experience. There's a community that happens within a theater audience. This can happen during a great film but I think what heightens the live theater experience is that it is a crowd of humans interacting with another crowd of humans (the actors.) You don't get this with film or sitting at home watching a movie. This is one of the reasons why I think theater will always exist. There's a strange voyeurism that people like to watch other live people.
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