For thousands of years, people have been arguing that theatre is a dying art form. Many people think theatre is all just cheesy singing and dancing or just boring old Shakespeare, but there is much more to theatre than those two extremes. Theatre is important to our society because it teaches us more about real life than recorded media. Theatre has been around for thousands of years and began as a religious ceremony that evolved into an art form that teaches about the true essence of life. Theatre can incorporate profound, and provocative, observations of the human condition that can transcend time; lessons found in Greek plays can still be relevant to the modern world. People argue that the very essence of theatre is being snuffed out by modern …show more content…
Theatre is something that brings people together; it needs and audience to exist unlike movies and television. For a performance to happen, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand or more people need to gather in one place for a few hours, and share together in witnessing a live event that may be beautiful, funny, moving, or thought-provoking. Each type can fade in and out of popularity but it is not foreseeable that live performance will ever really "die out". Even in a world where all narrative performances have migrated to video, some musician at some point may introduce a new element of theatricality into their show, or some standup comic will act out something for their routine, people will respond to it, and suddenly we 'll see Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Rogers and Hammerstein popping up all over the …show more content…
Theatre is a more language driven medium, while movies and television are driven by what you see. Theatre relies solely on excellent script, and acting. Theatre has a live element, a more heightened sense of realism. Some argue that we are losing the very essence of theatre, its live-ness, because of recorded media seeping into plays and performances (Trueman). With technology things can more easily go wrong. Lyn Gardner says that if the show relies too heavily on technology, it can cause performances to be canceled completely due to technical glitches that instead of adding to performances, the technology has become the show. The spectacle has began to make actors obsolete, leaving the audience to feel alienated and passive to the performance rather than part of it as they should feel
Click here to unlock this and over one million essays
Show MoreThe audience is an important factor to determine the success of a spectacle. It is known that there is no spectacle without audience. The musical theater presentations are known for their number of people, which according to the Broadway League (n.d.), the 2013 season reached attendance of 11.57 million. However, the number of spectators has been decreased in comparison with the peak of popularity for musicals in the last century. The first reason for that is that the spectators of musical theater presentations were a more specific group such as wealthy and intellectual people that used to go to this type of presentation, and this pattern has been consistent until now, as it can be seen in the price of a Broadway spectacle that is very expensive. Second, the spectators have to go where the spectacles are set up, which makes the live presenta...
Lazarus, Joan. "On the Verge of Change: New Directions in Secondary Theatre Education." Applied Theatre Research 3.2 (July 2015): 149-161. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/atr.3.2.149_1.
I went to see Around the World in eighty Days with a very open mind as it was the first professional play I have gone to see and after I left I was absolutely stunned. After experiencing the dynamic magic that is professional theatre I became positive I would never pay to see a film in a theatre ever again. I never thought film actors and stage actors were the same but now I know unequivocally that the two are on separate planets. The vast differences in both planets truly makes one appreciate theatre for all of its’ glory. While I never thought much of or respected actors, and why would anyone; stage actors are true workers, stage actors are true artists, stage actors are actual actors.
Theatre can sometimes be thought to be out-dated and out-stripped by the technological capabilities of film, others believe that film is too often a sell-out and the use of special effects have become so frequent and easy to create, that film is more of a commercial medium rather than an art form.
With a strong community engagement due to amateur productions and new pop music theatre works, relevant subject matter and effective dissemination techniques and finally, endorsements from the media and music industry that promote its financial success, it can be construed that the American musical theatre industry will continue to flourish. Given these factors from aspects of the ‘ecosystem of music’ (Schippers, 2009), musical theatre in America has a long lasting future ahead of
years ago the word "theater" possessed a different meaning than it does in today's society. The
In conclusion, theatre, as is the case with most art, is a lie. However, due to the nature of the art itself, it helps bring both the creator and the audience closer to the truth, whether it is a truth about themselves, others, or their environment. Theatre forces the actor to temporarily substitute their reality for a lie, and the audience to observe the substituted realities, especially if they know the actors. Theatre brings all involved parties closer to the truth of themselves through nonstop lying.
Through the evolution of the performing art, the market and industry of performing start to rise in popularity. The concept of going to theater is cool because people are able to enjoy the visual effects of live shows that people cannot experience when watching television at home. Going to theater seems to be simple and usual but people are reluctant to sacrifice leisure time to watch shows at a theater. The differences between watching television shows at home and attending theater shows are the personal experience and the cultural atmosphere. When people are watching the television shows alone, they are unlikely to feel the powerful effect of rendering the stage. The interactions between the audience and the actors do not seem realistic on the television because the ambience does not penetrate through the screen to reach the people. Going to theater also provides the
are heavily influenced by theatre and Broadway therefore, people are more aware of live theatre and often attend plays. Cities such as Modesto, Turlock, Stockton, etc. have little knowledge and are less aware of live theatre. As a result, people in such cities prefer entertainment in movie theatres. The entertainment levels differ between live theatre and movies depending on how that particular entertainment is presented and how the audience recognizes it. The main goal of live theatre is to entertain the audience either through comedy, tragedy, romance, and action through the use of costumes, effects, props, and lighting to achieve the highest possible entertainment level for the people in order for them to come watch more theatre and drama. On the other hand, some people prefer movies to be more entertaining due to enhanced sound and edited picture. Movies are mainly offered everywhere meanwhile, live theatre is harder to find especially local. I would advise people to try out and attend live theatre plays and give it a try. It is a great experience for family and friends. I am glad that I took this course and had the chance to explore theatre and drama. I will definitely attend live theatre plays in the future. It is a different form of entertainment compared to movies. Theatre is composed of many emotions and will leave the audience feeling some type of way. In my opinion, theatre is a form of exceptional art. I had different empowering emotions and experience with these three events. Theatre is truly a memorable art of
Theatre has heavily evolved over the past 100 years, particularly Musical Theatre- a subgenre of theatre in which the storyline is conveyed relying on songs and lyrics rather than dialogue. From its origination in Athens, musical theatre has spread across the world and is a popular form of entertainment today. This essay will discuss the evolution and change of musical theatre from 1980-2016, primarily focusing on Broadway (New York) and the West End (London). It will consider in depth, the time periods of: The 1980s: “Brit Hits”- the influence of European mega musicals, the 1990s: “The downfall of musicals”- what failed and what redeemed, and the 2000s/2010s: “The Resurgence of musicals”- including the rise of pop and movie musicals. Concluding
Then, there is technical theatre. This area of theatre is my favorite and the goal for my future. Technicians are the ones who create the world for the actors or somehow manage everything behind the scenes. Before I explain the multiple fields and areas of technical theatre, I must stress how important this side of theatre is overall. When it comes down to getting a degree in technical theatre or pursuing it, people tend to view it as a purely practical occupation and experience based. Take a look at it in comparison to performance; in a graduate thesis by Christian J. Hershey in 2015, he took a survey of college courses offered for theatre education for a technical focused theatre degree rather than those offered for a performance focused
...ously and see plays and performances not only as art but as a vital part of the human existence.
Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with. The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time.
Theatre as we know it now was born more than two thousand years ago and has gone through many streams until it reached the current modernity. Among these streams is the avant-garde theatre. This theatre achieved a break in the traditional theatre and became the forefront of a new experimental theatre. Therefore it is necessary to ask how this theatre started, what impact it had on society and if this type of theatre is still common in our modern era.