DC Metro Theater Arts: At first, the shutdown of live theater came as a shock. Then, once artists were left to think quick on their feet, an extraordinary evolution began to happen.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the live entertainment industry was crippled, leaving thousands of artists out of work and theaters in survival mode. For theater, which is predicated on bringing people together, staying six feet apart is out of the ordinary. Yet despite all odds, live theater has found new ways to draw an audience, and many of these innovations may change the way live theater is viewed forever.
3 comments:
At this point, I don’t know if we should call it theater or just film… where is the line? The pandemic has really made us rethink with it is and is theater still theater online and record? Im still trying to answer that question myself honestly. There has been a lot of change over the past year and people have found very creative ways to continue to create but is pandemic “theater” something needed to be renamed? Is it the same or is it a new form of entertainment? I know some people at VCU that are in the drama department and I have heard about some of their work and how they have continued with projects. It is interesting to see the differences in how different academic institutions have adapted. Those that I have talked to say that they still enjoy the work that they are doing, it's just not what they had envisioned studying. Personally, I’ve struggled with thinking about is this theater and is theater what I want to go into after college? What will theater be after the pandemic? Just a lot of questioning where this industry is going.
As Alexa mentioned, it's now difficult to determine where the line is between "virtual theater" and film. I was having a conversation with some friends recently, though, about how some scripts feel out of their element when translated to virtual theater. We talked about how a lot of scripts for plays are written specifically to be performed live, or else why not just make a film? But now that virtual theater is becoming more and more of a legitimate media, we wondered if maybe there would be scripts written now that are made specifically for live video calls. I think zoom and other platforms like it has a lot of interesting settings that could be utilized in the way that the way that theaters are built is utilized within a script for a live play. I also really hope that the possibility for virtual theater can make theater more accessible for people. Although I want live theater to come back as much as the next person, I want the elitism to stay behind.
This is definitely just the angst drama student in me who desperately wishes he could deny the fact that he can't do what he came to CMU to do, but what a boring, tired article. Like… we know? I’m sure it was probably very informative for those not immersed in the theatre world. But I feel like I have seen about five articles a day telling me that “the world of theater is changing forever.” Like, I know! Literally everything is changing! Just let me pretend it isn't happening so I can sleep at night.
But on a more serious note, I think it's very interesting to see plays and musicals written before the pandemic with live theatre in mind have to transition, vs shows that were written to be performed fully virtually. Honestly I think we shouldn't be doing any virtual theatre unless we somehow adapt it and make it make sense for it to take place in a virtual setting. My least favorite pieces of virtual theater have been those that try to deny their modality and ask the audience to ignore it. It’s impossible to make it feel like “real theatre”, so why not lean into the new medium.
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