Here's a thought I got via Alfred Bester:
The essential element in theatre is the audience.
I suppose this pretty much applies across the arts.
If you think about it, you can take away pretty much anything else, but not the audience. Even the players: an animated movie is "theatre" without players. But even if somebody is just creating for himself, then he has an audience.
Of course a creator should not kowtow to his audience's demands. This will limit the art, since a specific audience always has a limited understanding. But an abstract audience is a different matter. And I find that considering such a thing makes me think differently about creating.
4 comments:
An episode in "Slings and Arrows" (a Canadian? sit-com about the behind-the-scenes workings of a dysfunctional Shakespeare company) includes discussion of this fact. They have a Hollywood action hero starring as Hamlet (to get the audiences in, they had to pick a celebrity) and he mentions to his girlfriend, that he likes to secretly go to his movies in order to watch the audience reaction. She, a stage actress, is bemused to have to inform him, that you do that every night in the theatre.
I think the premise behind the discussion is more in the direction of the fact that the audience in theatrical productions is there WHILE YOU'RE MAKING IT. For a book or DVD or online music video or any other digital medium, the audience is of course a prime concern; but it's not right there in your face during the process. Only if you're on stage, are you actually interacting in real-time.
I bet there are some tricky multiple-level user-interaction types of artworks available on the web now. I'd like to see how those go to the "audience participation" bit.
Yes, "Slings and Arrows" is a Canadian show. It's available on DVD (three seasons) and is highly recommended (by me).
Thanks. "Slings and Arrows" is getting really good reviews, so I'm getting it. (Lucky I have a region-free DVD player.)
F.I., you may have a point. Still I feel it's applicaple to areas where the audience is not there in the moment. (Just as they are not for the playwright.)
Well, folks who haven't done on-stage work probably won't get the difference. There's certainly always a thought TO the audience; but a work CHANGES when the audience is PART OF the creation of it. That's my main point: that people forget, that "interactive" isn't happening if the work is COMPLETE when it's recorded and put up on the web or on a DVD. What happens on stage is an entirely different animal, whether you're performing (or watching) a ballet or a stage play or stand-up comedy or ...
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