A challenge I pose in my theatre classes early in the year is to guess at why live theatre still exists. In a day and time of movies, television, Netflix, YouTube, 3K, 4K, Retina, and Ultra HD, how can poor little theatre survive? Movies were to have killed live theatre. Television was to kill movies that were to kill theatre in a big, bad bloodbath of entertainment. How in the world has theatre survived and some would say thrived cornered in by so much technology?
One possibility I throw out (and again a muse – no answers – just musing): I see film, television and all of those other technological arts as profolactic arts. The experience in the movie theatre feels real, looks real, sounds real. We get so very close to the action. An actor’s nose fills the entire IMAX screen. We are close! But, ultimately it is a profolactic experience. The film, the screen, and the digital marvels stop my intimate sharing; there will always be that thin barrier between the actual event and us. Granted the barrier is VERY thin and almost invisible. 3K, 4K, Blueray, Ultra HD have made this barrier paper thin – but we KNOW it is there. Nothing can be felt in its entirety. We are safe and protected but as a result, the intensity of our experience is compromised.
Live theatre, however, offers no such protection. We can sense the actual sight, smell, taste, touch and sound of the art. We may be sitting rows and rows away but there is nothing between us. We might not be cognizant of this sensual intimacy, but it is there nevertheless. Without this barrier, the art of theatre is wonderfully dangerous but comes with such risk. Censors are around every corner ready to shut us down with the slightest turn. We are doing high risk art and we know it.
I would love to continue on with my metaphor of prophylactic art, but perhaps it would become too much for this somewhat educationally focused blog. Someday, perhaps, when I retire, I can come back to this entry and take the metaphor of this profolactic arts to its natural climax but later . . .