"Intersection accidents may account for up to fifty percent of all injury-inducing accidents." (Source: The Internet)
Obviously, the intersection of theater and film is a dangerous place. Especially for those of us in theater. Film is a heavy-duty, high-powered dump truck, and we're an easily distracted dude on a scooter.
First, let me say that I'm a big fan of our local filmmakers. I admire their creativity and determination, and I hope they put me in all their movies.
But before we spend any more time exploring the intersection of film and theater, I want to take a moment to try to untangle the two, because, if those of us in theater are not very clear about what theater does that movies can't do better, the theater will not/cannot continue as anything more than a pleasant hobby.
Since the advent of motion pictures, many of the things that audiences went to the theater for have been usurped. And rightly so. Movies do lots of stuff much better than we can do on stage. You can lower all the helicopters and chandeliers you want, you'll never beat
Avatar for spectacle. You can bring the real, blood-stained, working interior of a butcher shop onto the stage (Emile Zola did), and it won't come close to the right-there-in-the-hazmat-suit experience of
The Hurt Locker.
From the floating mountains of Pandora to the dusty streets of Baghdad, movies excel at creating visually complete worlds. Even with the most detailed, lovingly assembled set, the guy in Row J will never appreciate the tea stains on the doily because he can’t see them. The camera can zoom in on those tea stains.
Theater can’t compete.
This doesn’t mean we should give up on spectacle or realism in the theater. But it does mean that unless the theater has something uniquely its own, something important, then it will become to storytelling what moderate Republicans are to politics.
So we theater folk— to keep things neat, let's agree to combine theater, musical theater, opera and dance into the group "theater folk"—we theater folk have to do our best to answer these two questions:
- Is there anything theater can do that movies (and TV, online videos, etc.) can't do better?
- If so, is that thing unique and important enough to keep the theater healthy and vibrant?
Question 1: Thinking vs. dreaming
The great theater designer Robert Edmond Jones was thrilled by the potential of movies. He saw that movies made it possible to tell a story the way people think, jumping effortlessly through time and space. There’s no need for transitions and scene changes when you have a film editor.
I think he was right. Movies do work like thought. But maybe theater works the way we dream.
There’s an intense but narrow focus to dreams. Whatever we are experiencing is bright, clear and complete, surrounded by darkness. The important stuff is right in front of us, and the unnecessary is left in the shadows.
Dreams follow a strict logic. It’s not the logic we know in waking life, but everything seems to proceed according to a set of rules we sense without understanding. Somehow, I knew my cat would turn into my high school shop teacher and ask for a ride to Las Vegas.
This sense of a hidden logic gives dreams an importance beyond themselves. It feels as if these things are happening for a reason. Everything is both real and a symbol.
Doesn’t that sound like a play to you?
You gotta have faith
Plus, I can walk out on stage and say something like, "Well, here I am, the King of France, and I'm wandering around in this lovely forest." And the audience will say to themselves, "Oh, he's the King of France, and he's wandering around in a lovely forest."
Of course, I'm not the king of France, and this isn't a lovely woods, but not only do you, the audience, kindly refrain from pointing this out, you immediately start filling in the missing parts, making me more kingly and planting the theater with ancient oaks.
This is more than the willing suspension of disbelief. It's a leap of faith. Faith! You believe something you know cannot be true. Isn’t that faith?
Movies don’t require faith. A complete world is brought to you, so you become a voyeur, thrilling to this glimpse of another life. But the theater needs faith.
When you see a production that understands this, it will ask you to make lots of little leaps of faith, one after another, until it asks for one last leap that takes you to someplace you've never gone before.
You start by agreeing that that old man over there is a king. And those are his daughters. And he can divide up his kingdom if he wants, but he’s being kind of a jerk about it. And, oh, he shouldn’t kick that one guy out. I think that daughter is trouble. And so is her sister. And look out, there’s a terrible storm in here. And now the old man is holding the body of his youngest child in his arms and saying “Never, never, never, never, never,” and you’re crying for him and her and yourself and every bit of regret you’ve ever experienced.
A real theatrical experience leaves you standing there naked and ridiculous in the face of the universe. If it’s a tragedy, you’ll be naked and sobbing. If it’s a comedy, naked and giggling.
Unfortunately, that experience is rare. That’s our fault. The audience shows up with vast reserves of faith, and we leave them out. Instead of opening up our plays and asking for their help, we make them sit there and watch us “act.” This is rude of us and very, very boring.
But when we get it right we transform the audience into little gods, creating worlds that never existed before. The only god in film is the director. It’s a monotheistic art (
as Peter O’Toole will tell you). But the theater is like the messy, jealous, deeply-flawed huddle of Greek gods that inspired the first theatrical performances.
Question 2: Who cares
If we do the plays and the productions that invite our audience to be little gods, is that enough to keep the theater healthy and vibrant? I don’t know. This question leads depressingly toward a “Is the Theater is a Dying Art” discussion, which, frankly, bores me.
What if it is? The theater’s not dying tomorrow. And in the meantime, I like it and have devoted considerable time and energy to it. “But something ere the end,/"
wrote Tennyson. "Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”
So let’s agree to let the movies do what movies do best, and we’ll keep trying to do what we do best. We’ll ask our audiences to stand there with us, naked and ridiculous in the face of the universe.
