Stage | guardian.co.uk: The terror season is upon us in British theatre. Jack the Ripper is already stalking the streets around London Bridge, and Nosferatu will soon be rising from the dead at the Barbican. Like the late 19th-century theatregoers who flocked to the Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris, where the blood came by the bucketful and medics were on hand to minister to those who passed out at the sight of severed limbs, modern theatregoers have a taste for theatrical splatterfests. Maybe we are not all that different from our Jacobean counterparts, who loved plays such as The Revenger's Tragedy on the grounds that "when the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good" (in the words of Vindice, the play's sniggering antihero).
15 comments:
I agree with the idea that some of the most frightening parts of a show is when you don't see what happens. When I watch a show were the violence is done off stage I feel like I have even less power. I can't shout no because the characters will not hear me and I can get up out of my seat and stop them because I do not know where the action is happening. When obscene amounts of violence happen I look at everything before that and figure out exactly what I could have done to stop the violence. The lack of control is what can be truly terrifying. One of the most terrifying shows I have ever saw had absolutely no violence in it. It left it all to the imagination and a feeling of powerlessness. I think those two things together can combine to be more frightening than any blood and guts on stage.
Leaving certain elements of a show up to the imagination of the audience especially when it comes to trying to be scary or to cause disgust can be more effective than actually trying to portray it onstage. Audiences who typically watch horror films have been so conditioned and have adapted to the gore that when they see similar scenarios portrayed onstage they have more of a comedic effect than frightening one.
I saw a play recently where an actor gave birth to a dead baby after being kicked in the stomach by a "person". The actor portrayed all of this with his movements and actions. There was no one physically hitting him, nor a dead baby shown. This I think was definitely more effective, because it made me imagine it happening and it made me think of the pain involved. I think that due to this I was able to connect with the experience on a deeper level rather than thinking about how fake everything seemed. The Greeks did know what they were doing!!
When violence and gruesome images are not shown on stage, it leaves the actions to the imagination of each individual member of the audience. Each person can scare him- or herself better than anyone else in the world, because a person's brain knows exactly what that person is scared of. When describing a huge, terrifying monster with only the sound of a fearsome growl, the actual looks of the monster are left up to the imagination and can scare each individual as completely as possible.
This article brings to mind the time I saw "The Sound of Music" when I was five. The scariest part was definitely when Rolf threatened the Von Trapp family by brandishing a gun. It was the suspense that scared me - I pictured so many different scenarios in my head, all of which were a thousand times worse than what actually happened. But I was scared because I just didn't know.
There is something so much more theatrical about not seeing the violence. THe obsession with fake blood and violence in our society has become a little tasteless. The perfect example of this is the play the Pilloman. The entire show is filled with unneeded violence and gruesome, bloody scenes, but none of it doesn't anything to really help the play. In the end it just makes me less likely to go out and see it because it feels as though the entire show simply lacks taste. Then you think about the greek tragedies and how they have lasted so long. Clearly they are doing something right and maybe modern theater should take a page out of their book and cut the obsession with fake blood and severed limbs. A little class is always nice.
Can i say that i was scared by the Phantom of the Opera the first time i watched it........and then Swdny Todd, and then Phantom again........i just cant stand midcentury English Horror Story.....
I don't think I've ever seen a show the has ceated his type reaction from me. The closest I have come o anything of the sort would be Sweeney Todd. The problem with that was, becuase it is such a famous show, I knew what was coming and wasn't horrified when it happened.
Thinking about it now, though, I change my answer to Oedipus. The first time I saw this performed, I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen when Oedipus dissapears. when he emerges wih blood coming from his eyes, there was a pure retching desire to scream or gag or check to make sure my eyes were still in their sockets. This is absolutely because the horror happens off stage. It leaves the audience wondering whether they will see what has actually happened or simply hear about it from another character. When he acually does walk on stage, it elevates the horror because no one in their right mind would have thouht that stabbing his eyes out would be the correct solution to his problem. To this day, even just reading this seen sends shivers down my spine.
I would not have been able to answer this question until last week. I just read The Pillowman for Stagecraft. Never before have I been made physically sick from reading anything. and I have read most of Stephen King. I cant imagine what its like on stage but I don't think I would have a very good reaction to watching a little girl get crucified on stage among other, some equally as horrifying some worse, events. I assume this article is in the spirit of Halloween. I think the Pillowman would make for the perfect Halloween show.
As an add on to my previous comment I think the only reason things are m0ore horrifying off stage is because its kind of hard to do terrible things believably onstage, and this way we can imagine whatever our brains bring us to about what happens. However I think we are getting pretty close to being able to realistically depict certain things on stage Greek tragedy did everything off stage cause they had no choice.
I agree that sometimes it is better to leave gore to offstage because the human mind can imagine much worse then you can create on stage. Also it is so easy for a production to make the gore seem fake. In theater, or anything really, it doesn't have to be the gore that terrifies you. It can be the suspense not knowing what or when or if somehing will happen. Using the enviroment against the audiance is an awesome way to make people scared.
I definitely agree with all of the above comments. Gore off stage is much more powerful than onstage, which can often look hokey. Leaving it to the imagination is (hopefully) scarier. That said, I've never truly felt fear while seeing a show and I'm wondering just why that is. Onstage or offstage gore has made a difference in my perception of different productions, but regardless I don't believe any play has evoked fear or worry in me. That is definitely not true for movies. I wonder what would make an even larger difference in garnering fear from a live audience. I don't know the answer.
I agree with Jamila on how leaving some parts of story to audience's imagination is very effective because it is the imaginable on-going situation that seriously frightens audience. You might think more extremely than what might actually happen if it were shown on the stage. Even in the opera, In to the Woods, that I recently watched, when giant stepped or killed several characters such as Rapunzel, it was expressed through the sound rather than being seen. I thought it was more effective than any other effect because with the real sound of being smashed, I could imagine a horrible situation in my head. If it were more like an actor fallen down with blood, it would have been more awkward and ineffective. Reading this article made me think that sometimes, sight is not the most effective ways to nerve audience's senses.
I love scary movies and haunted house and that type of stuff but I have yet to experience a scary play so I definitely look forward To experiencing that. I think what makes watching something scary difficult to stomach sometimes is that your watching something bad about to happen And you know it's going to happen but there's nothing building can do about it. You almost feel guilty for not helping them even though you know it's fake.
I agree with the comments above. Violence is more memorable when offstage, and I feel like it has something to do with the subcnscious. In everyday life, we are always afraid of what we cannot see. We are more afraid when it is dark out, because it is harder to see anything dangerous. It is scarier when people are backlit because you cannot see their faces, and their identities are lost. It is also possible that each audience member knows what scares them the most. So when a death occurs offstage, they also think about what they think is the most awful way to die. That thought combined with the sound and knowledge of a character's death onstage increases the horror, as opposed to seeing what the director thinks is the most awful way to die.
i believe off stage violience can be a double edged soward. in one way it can be even more scary and brilliant for the audience depending on how they use their imagination, the other side to that however is if the audience has no imagination and cant imagine whats happening besides the bare minimum. id say the likely hood of both of these options is 50/50 there are proably and egual amojunt of unimaginitive peopel goign to the theater (which is why theyre going ) to imaginitive people. just depends on the particular audience
I personally feel like seeing the rusome act scares me more because its a vivid image in my head. With violence done offstage i feel like you lose some of that vividness.
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