We really don't care about theatre do we?

slocki, it seems to me a hell of a lot of great films were made in the 1930s, and many of them were only a few baby steps away from being filmed stage productions with over-the-shoulder reaction shots and the occassional montage (thank you Sergei) to spice them up.

If montage is as ESSENTIAL as you say it is, then these films would have failed at birth, rather than becoming successful films - which, not coincidentally are still watched, enjoyed and studied today. Montage is just another nifty tool in a director's toolbox. It just happens to be such a useful tool that it gets used a lot.

30s films are usually edited pretty briskly, so it's not simply a matter of using up a reel of film shooting an integral theatrical performance. "montage" doesn't mean soviet montage necessarily--just, y'know, editing bits of film together. all hollywood films are edited together from master shots, medium shots (plan american etc.), and occasionally inserts/close ups at a rate of i dunno one shot every 10-12 seconds. (nowadays it's more like every 5 seconds but we're talking about the 1930s)

i think this is pretty important: "filmed theater" isn't really as simple as that, the fact of it being filmed and edited together in the conventional way transforms the way the story is being told. perhaps the "meaning" is ultimately the same, but i'm not sure that's true or if it even matters so much.

to get "filmed theater" you need to go back to 1895-1910 or so, like the original version of the "wizard of oz" which is basically "selected scenes from the stage play of 'the wizard of oz'"--but as i noted above the spatial aspect of film is such that a stage performance is NECESSARILY transformed if it is to be "faithfully" captured on film. those early films that don't bother with such a transformation are often incomprehensible and usually dismissed as "primtive" (that's another hill of beans or whatever).

some "fixed setup" films do sort of selfconsciously evoke a "theatrical" quality, or even overtly beg comparison to theater: oliveira, etc.--or to "primitive" cinema (angelopoulos). and certain kinds of framing (even outside the context of a long-take style) can evoke theater, "performance" too with fruitful results. but lots of fixed-setup films really don't evoke theater at all. it's impossible to imagine hou or jia films as anything but cinema--the natural settings, natural lighting, etc. are absolutely critical.

anyway yeah so i think cinema can do a lot with "theatricality" and i don't think calling a film "theatrical" is a very convincing slur (unless you're writing in 1905, maybe).

i'm repeating myself and possibly not making sense.\

XPOST

s1ocki, i didn't find aimless's post dismissive. anyways i'm not a film student or anything. i'm not sure about agree/disagree--i don't think i dismissed aimless's post or embraced it fully. i just sort of responded to it.

!!

Seen anything else? New Yorkers, Albee's Seascape?

that's probably it, coupled with the world's general philistinism. I wuv the theatre and wish i went to it more often. The last thing I saw was a monster production of Titus Andronicus before Christmas.

We need a rolling Theatre S/D thread really, but as you all say, nobody cares.

xp i care

Yes, but why? (I'm not being flippant.)

speaking of revivals, though, when I was in LA, I took my grandmother to one of the Reprise! shows, which had great original choreography and housed in a small enough theatre (at UCLA) that the amplification (live orchestra) wasn't overbearing. one of the leads, Tami Tappan Damiano, was moderately impressive too. they also do one-weekend shows with some medium-sized Hollywood types (when I was there - Working, with among others Camryn Manheim).

I basically prefer fringier theatre... partly this is the indie kid in me, but I think also that fringy theatre is more true to what the theatre is all about. It's still more expensive than I'd like it to be... why can't they just replace all actors with cheaper non-unionised Eastern Europeans?

The thing I hate most about the theatre is that in general you have to book in advance and can't just show up on whim to things like you can with other things.

when i say "beyond realism" i mean it in the most mundane way that you might not find interesting at all, that's cool. for example, in film a table is always a table but in the theatre that exact same table could be a table, a bed, an autopsy slab, a raft, a shelter, or any number of things. e.g. a Robert Lepage play i saw where a washing machine doubles up as a space ship (not as ridiculous as it sounds). there are any number of things you can "only do in the theatre" whereas the public perception is that theatre is limited in some way, compared to film. i think it's the opposite. this needs lots of examples & i don't have the time to go into it now but i'll come back to it later.

theres a bunch of interesting stuff on in london, and here in the provinces we've got "the romans in britain" next month in sheffield, dario fo's "mistero buffo" in april, and in leeds the trinidadian "three sisters" at the WYP, which i was reading about the other day.

I love the crucible, but the last thing i saw there was a hmmmm version of "much ado about nothing"

saw the history boys too in sheffield which was excellent, although i thought the set was a bit showy.

i dont understand going to the theatre in london, from what my parents go through it seems as though you have to book tickets a year in advance or something?!?!! up here i just turn up generally.

mind you, that yforward planning allowed me to see the full 9 hours of "coast of utopia" at the national which was pretty fucking special, if a bit harsh on yr ass

ok - i think the the table thing is an example of something that opens out wider possibilites for theatre, i dont mean it just like "props in the theatre can be many different things and that's why it's important" but as i said i'll give more examples later.

realism SuXoR.

Thanks for the update, dlh!

Only just discovered the existence of Teen Hadestown as there's a local production in July - are there many other musicals where there's no "grown-up" licensing available? Loved the original Anais Mitchell album back in the day so have been very slow to come to grips with the metamorphosis it undertook on the way to Broadway, though her book Working On A Song was a fascinating read about process.

Saw the local production of A New Brain last weekend - illness in the cast meant the director stepped in as The Doctor, the choreographer as Nancy D, and the person playing the Minister played Roger as well (jacket on = former / off = latter), but if I hadn't known I wouldn't have been able to tell. Puppets as the two nurses! I'd seen the actor playing Mr Bungee in Assassins as Sam Byck, going to keep an eye on what else he turns up in.

Caught a Shakespeare-in-the-park performance of Much Ado About Nothing on the shore of Lake Pupuke (famous to any NZ 80s teen via Under The Mountain) - very very loose "underground punk club" setting/costuming but I guess wardrobe had fun, and the ducks/swans drowning out the dialogue at sunset.

So more about the drama upthread. The show did not actually get pulled. My friend, who wrote the script, had put up the expensive entrance fee that was nonrefundable (because the producer had no money, which...what?). So he wanted to recoup his costs because he's not a rich man and we blessed him givkng permission to the awful toxic producer to recast because it was completely understandable.

In 30 years of theater, this was only the second play I quit. The first was due to an unforseen work conflict. So it's been hard seeing not only the producer suffer no repercussions, but seeing other people do our show that we were handpicked to perform.

However, because I am a vindictive fuck, I read the local paper's review of the show and it got eviscerated. Yay schadenfreude. My friend will still recoup his costs but there is zero chance this shit will win any festival awards with one of the two local paper's hating it (since their critics choose the awards).