[RiverStar]: 149.Essays.Stage or Screen

STAGE OR SCREEN?
THAT IS THE QUESTION.

In the ancient times of the Greeks and Romans, theatrical productions were full of stories about their gods and beliefs, where the entire population of the city and surrounding area would gather together as a community to watch these great spectacles. As long as there was theatre, there has been a communal gathering around what was called the theatrical event. As I will be using the term, a theatrical event is the culmination of months of design and rehearsal, when finally the production is performed in front of an audience. Throughout history, the theatrical event was a major part of society. However, in the last century, this communal gathering around the theatrical event has dwindled from the great events drawing the majority of the population to a lost art of a fringe society. Now theatrical events are usually attended by a very select audience: the elder mid-upper class (the ones who can afford high ticket costs and do not have much else to do with their time), people involved in the arts communities, and various types of students (most often forced to attend shows as part of their curriculum).
The decreased attendance to theatrical events is most often attributed to the rise of film. Many people will argue that film is the new theatre. While I admit it is true that theatre’s decreasing popularity corresponds with the film industry’s increasing popularity and film does derive from theatre, I believe that the loss of the tradition of attending theatrical events is detrimental to our society as theatre is a much more powerful art form than film. The theatrical event is a much more valuable tradition than its modern substitute of watching movies due to its interaction, changeability and reality.
Before even discussing what actually happens when you watch a movie or play, there is the environment of where you do this action and who is surrounding you while you do it to consider. The type and amount of human interaction has changed dramatically with the shift from theatre to film. When you want to watch a movie, you can easily watch it from the comfort of your own home, either by yourself, or with a few well-known people you choose to have with you at the time. While this allows you to be comfortable, it does not create anything new or different in terms of social interaction. However, you may also choose to go to the cinema to watch a movie. At the cinema, you can interact with complete strangers; you talk with them before and after the show, you overhear their conversations with others whether you want to or not, and you often experience the same emotions during the show. This forces you to interact with society, even if it is in that annoyed, bitter way when you yell at the children talking behind you.
Going to the cinema is as close as you can get to the theatrical event with film. A theatrical event will not pack up and appear on your doorstep, so enjoying from the comfort of your own home is out of the question. You must go out and be in the company of strangers, much like you would go to the cinema, but theatre has another element of interaction that film does not: the ability to interact with the performers.
During a movie, if a cell phone starts ringing, the actors on screen do not hear it, let alone react to it. In the theatre however, every noise the audience makes is heard and sometimes even reacted to by the performers. In the play Earshot, the main character a man who has an overdeveloped sense of hearing. At one point in the play he holds a gun to his head, ready to kill himself. One night, at the very crucial moment, an audience member’s cell phone started its musical jingle. At the movies, nothing would happen aside from some annoyed hushing from the audience, the actors would not react in any way. However, on that night in the theatre, the actor lowered his gun and pointed it directly towards the noise of the cell phone. 
This ability to interact with the audience and performers is what gives the theatre it’s ability to create a community like what the Roman’s had with their great epics and coliseums, at least in a smaller scale. This sense of community is not something you can get from sitting home at home in front of your television.
This performer interaction leads to the theatre’s ability to change and it’s spontaneity. A movie is static; it does not have the ability to change whatsoever. No matter how many times you watch Gone With the Wind, the lines are always the same; the actors never make a mistake. In the theatre, there is a script and things are generally always the same with each performance of the same show, but there are always slight differences. An actor can forget his lines, trip, or a prop can malfunction. In the world of film, these mistakes are only seen in the blooper reel, but in the theatre there is no second chance, everything is live. These minute changes allow each night to be just that little bit different because theatre is much more human, it can not be perfect, while film is more robotic, functioning perfectly each time.
Just as the theatrical event is more human, it is also closer to reality and so can be much more touching. In film, you have the ability to completely distort reality with special effects. When this distortion takes place it’s easier to withdraw from the situation. How much do we really have in common with the elves of Lord of the Rings? When sometime is set within the limits of time, space and reality, it is much easier to be able to connect with it because it is more likely to actually happen. This is one of the reasons theatre is so much more powerful than film. There is also a reality in the theatre in the way any nudity or violence is so much more real because it is right in front of you with a real person, not an image on a screen that could just as likely be produced by a computer as be a real person.
Movies are static, distant, and lack reality, while at the theatre you have the ability to interact with the audience and performers, there is always something different every time you see the show, and there is a human reality to what you are watching. The tradition of attending theatrical events provides a great form of art that is much more involved that film can ever be and we have lost something great in giving preference to film. After all, anything that has survived the Dark Ages and thousands of years of evolution deserves to be a big part of our society.









WORKS CITED
Earshot. By Morris Panych. Dir. Morris Panych. Perf. Randy Hughson. Studio, National Arts Centre, Ottawa, ON. 15 February 2006.