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.
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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).
ReplyDeleteThanks. "Slings and Arrows" is getting really good reviews, so I'm getting it. (Lucky I have a region-free DVD player.)
ReplyDeleteF.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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