Theatre 2.0 – What Do You Make Of It?
Tuesday 9th February, 5.09pm
There’s been a bit of a storm brewing of late about the future of theatre.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it but, basically, with all manner of technological advances creeping in; site-specific bits and pieces popping up left, right and centre; and the use of a motorcycle wall-of-death at the National Theatre of Scotland, many have been worried about the future of the traditional playhouse.
I say ‘worried,’ some people have been getting positively theatrical about the whole thing.
Theatrical, get it? Hahaha.
But seriously, Mark Fisher from the Guardian asks on his blog whether or not with theatre we are “in danger of losing sight of the live event?” If theatre is described as being ‘anything that is watched by an audience’, is a football match theatre, he asks, or a political debate?
Well, no, of course not.
A football match may have theatrical moments about it — one thinks of Didier Drogba who, until recently, liked to roll around like Hamlet in his death throes every time a defender so much as breathed on him a bit too roughly. No, a football match is not theatre because it is not designed to be theatre.
The same with a political debate, or a lecture, or a flash mob, or a train delay, or any other thing that gathers a crowd.
CCTV footage is not ‘reality TV’ until someone chops it up, bleeps out all the swearwords and slaps a Geordie voiceover on the whole thing. Same thing with theatre. You can use a 3D special effects wall like the recent production of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, or park up a caravan outside The Royal Court and have a play performed in there: it’s still a play because it is designed to be a play. Just because there’s no proscenium arch or any desperate drama students selling ice cream at half time does not mean that it’s not theatre.
After all, few who watched Avatar ran out the cinema and furiously lambasted it for not being a film because you had to wear weird, nerdy glasses and the pictures weren’t flat. Or that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? wasn’t a film because it had cartoons in it… or a cartoon because it had Bob Hoskins in it. No, they’re both films, they’re both films because they set out to be films.
Saying that, Hollyoaks sets out to be a soap and that’s a complete, humourless farce so maybe there’s something in it.
Anyway, have your say. Think producers have gone too far? Would you still like Mamma Mia! London if Sophie was replaced by a 3D hologram? Or We Will Rock You if it had motorbikes in it?
Wait, I totally would, anything but listen to that hammy script.
