Friday, October 25, 2013
8 Ways Television Is Influencing Theater
HowlRound: Anne Washburn started watching The Simpsons and writing plays at about the same time, and didn’t think they had anything to do with one another until she wrote Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play, running at Playwrights Horizons until October 20.
Her play imagines how survivors of an apocalypse would remember episodes of The Simpsons immediately after the end of civilization, then seven years later and seventy-five years after that. It illustrates what might be the most obvious of the eight ways, I am suggesting, that television is influencing theater.
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8 comments:
This is kind of an interesting perspective on the relationship between digital media and theatre. Most theatre people tend to believe that at some level digital media is killing theatre. I think that's fairly accurate too. A movie is a cheaper and easier alternative to theatre, and quite frankly there is such limited theatre participation these days, you can see why this animosity exists. What theatre practitioners don't often talk about is how digital media helps theatre. #7 in the article is the most obvious example: using video projection in theatre. But the article points out something I hadn't thought of but is actually huge: TV and movies for us is equivalent to mythology for the Greeks. They both have main players/actors, well recognized stories, back stories, and histories, and they both feed directly into theatre. I think this is so accurate and a fact that we should embrace more now than ever. I'm willing to bet that if we as theatre people were to embrace the movie/TV-theatre relationship, we could rebuild a stronger theatre base. I heard an engineering student quote Avenue Q, which he probably knew at some level because of its connection to the Muppets.
The most interesting point of this article is the fact that we have all been affected by television in one way or another, and that we may not even realize the ways in which this influence has manifested. I'm actually surprised that the article doesn't talk more about the way that the structure of the 30-minute or 1-hour television show has affected the average television viewer's attention span. I am someone who appreciates and understands theatre, and yet I still have a difficult time sitting through a play that is longer than 2 hours. The theatre companies that are doing the "one play a week" format seem to be the ones who are most directly addressing this issue. In reference to this, the article includes a quote about how these theatre companies are not asking any more of their audiences than one television show a week. Unfortunately, I don't find this to be true. To go see a play, you have to get out of your pajamas, leave the comfort of your home, get yourself to the theater, pay for tickets, and get yourself back home. Personally, I think that theatre is worth it, but I don't know how much of the general public that is true for. Playwrights, as mentioned in the end of this article, are really going to have to find something unique about their plays in order to pull audiences away from their televisions and into theaters. It's sadly going to be an uphill battle that theater practitioners/producers are going to have to fight constantly.
This is a really cool article because it is actually something I think about often. There was an article posted a month or so ago about television and movie actors crossing over into theatre and those articles are not to uncommon. And television is making its way into the theatre scene. I am not surprised that television is having its effect in our world because the Disney movies turned to Broadway musicals just kept coming. And then there was Book of Mormon, though it was not based on a TV series, Mat Stone and Tray Parker made their names with South Park, and this was used a lot in the initial marketing of the musical (its connection to the TV show).
A connection that was made in the article, as number 4, is the ability for writers to hop into the television industry. What is cool about this point is that it is true for many theatre professionals. I know plenty of lighting and sound designers who dabble in television to make more money and I have heard many times that is where the money is.
I agree with this article in that because of the ubiquity of television in our lives, it is having a direct effect on how theatre is conceptualized and produced. Television has certainly gotten audiences used to long stories served in small doses- it's a form of storytelling that seems to have one of the largest effects on our culture at the moment. I remember just aa few weeks ago when it seemed the entire world was freaking out about "Breaking Bad" ending, and I know at least on this campus one of the main obsessions is "Doctor Who." It is a shared cultural experience, in a way that theatre has not managed to tap into. It's also interesting that in another article this week ("Our Own Best Judges: Young Female Characters On Stage"), the author also speaks about the difference between theatre and television- that in television characters change slowly, if at all, while in theatre they must change quickly, over the course of a few hours.
I can understand why theatre has tapped into television, and I agree with Sarah's comment on a shared-cultural-experience. Television is able to reach thousands of people and create a common denominator between viewers across the globe. I know I have something in common with with a bunch of "Sherlock" lovers, even though I don't know those people personally. I try not to be believe that most of theatre is influenced by television, but this article made me a little discomforted. I never even knew that so many television shows (specifically those from #2), and I'm beginning to wonder, is there any authenticity in theatre? Do we always recreate art based on it's past popularity? I don't mind the new wave of media/projection design because it is the birth of an art form we have never played with before. I do have a problem with the initial play ideas originating from a television show itself. I don't see much creativity/risk that will help in the evolution of theatre.
I agree with what Sarah's point that television has been a ubiquity in our lives. Not only people started to make an adaptation of films into a play in theatre, but also they adapted TV shows into a stage and it turns out to be very successful and popular such as The Addams Family. However, it was surprising to see how sometimes, a playwright becomes a writer for the TV shows. Other than that, I saw a lot of celebrity casting and departures. Although it is good to have some interaction between theatre and TV, I sometimes feel very sad how people have to depart from theatrical world to TV because they have to make a living and also how people only insist on reproducing TV shows or films that already have been popular among audiences instead of insisting on originality. I hope that there will be more positive influence of TV on theater such as video projection.
It's really interesting to see this relationship between tv and theatre through a different perspective. On one hand it seems almost natural when most of us have grown up on tv that people are used to shorter scenes. Tv is so accessible with or without cable. On the other hand I think theatre has it's own ways of telling stories. Sure, it can be difficult to watch if it is running slow or the energy is down. However, at the right pace theatre can do what TV can. The separation between the two forms though could call for theatre becoming more accessible to lower-income families and couples. It can be hard to spend money on something you may only see once.
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