Just read an article in today’s Telegraph espousing the merits of the new Digital Theatre initiative, which aims to capture live performances and make them available to download from the web. Brilliant if, like me, you don’t get down to London as often as you might like. It gives you the option to enjoy the play without the hassle of buying tickets, parking, and generally mingling with the great unwashed. It definitely serves a purpose, and creates a digital archive that people can dip into at will. But a revolution of the form? A transformation of how we experience theatre? Pull the other one.
Theatre is ephemeral. It’s very appeal lies in its transience. The anticipation, the experience, the memory. You can’t just hit rewind to pick up the bits you missed. You have to focus, and theatre’s job is to hold that attention. If you feel the need to make a cup of tea half way through, it kind of spoils the moment.
Would there be such a debate about the greatest actor of the generation if you could just do a Google search for Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet? How would that compare to Simon Russell Beale? I’m not sure reputations would stand up to modern scrutiny.
But the one section that really gets my goat is the discussion of the two plays already up on the site. I saw The Container in Edinburgh in 2007. It’s a good play, not particularly great, but much of its effectiveness lies in the staging. The audience (10 max) were herded into the back of a lorry with the door slammed shut behind us. A functional way of putting us in the heart of the story of asylum seekers.
Here’s an excerpt from today’s Telegraph, describing DigitalTheatre’s rendering of the same play (my emphasis).
Having seen and reviewed both shows, I’d say that the viewing quality is, if anything, enhanced by what digitaltheatre have done. Whereas I was at the back of Richmond Theatre for Far from the Madding Crowd, the video version gave me a front-row seat; and The Container is arguably better than the original, both in its suspenseful camera-work and because you forgo the discomfort and heightened claustrophobia of sitting in a truck-container to concentrate, in the most close-up way possible, on what this unhappy band of illegal immigrants is actually saying.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but THAT WAS THE POINT! The discomfort, the claustrophobia, was an integral part of the theatrical experience. Without it, the play is a serviceable melodrama with stock characters and a conventional storyline. Taking that away removes the originality and some of the substance from the play. Removing the theatre from the equation lessens the experience dramatically. It’s not just about being in the same room with people and experiencing a play collectively. It’s about the visual grammar of the theatrical medium; the 3D experience that you just don’t get when sitting in front of a screen.
The question we should also ask is that will the live audience be treated as second best? At the Shift 2.0 conference a few months ago, I was in the audience of a play that was being live-streamed on the internet. I can see the artistic justification for this, as it creates a second, online audience that are engaging and almost participating in the event, with live feedback and conversations creating a whole new experience. Talawa Theatre are currently experimenting with this as part of Flipping the Script (next on tomorrow).
My problem lies with the experience of the ‘real’ audience sitting in the auditorium. Although the actors were not obviously playing to the camera; you always got the sense it was in the back of their minds. And they wore microphones, which crackled distractingly whenever they moved. It almost felt that the ‘live’ audience was being treated as second best. Which is not good.
Don’t get me wrong; I think DigitalTheatre is a great project, will undoubtedly reach new audiences and make theatre more accessible. As a resource, it will be invaluable, but I’m reluctant to view it as a revolution in the way we experience theatre. It’s not just about the “sacred institution of the ‘good night out’”, but about the immersive engagement with a live event. And that cannot be replicated.
