Everything, every-little-thing matters. So you might think that your theatre is made with nothing to say, and you might make your piece work regardless of whether it actually succeeds, but then we, as your audience, will respond silently.
Theatre can not exist without an audience. Do I really need to quote Peter Brook? Although the script may be the same every night, the performance is unique, each and every time it happens.
No two performances are ever the same. In this way, everyone involved has a distinct and unique experience that can never be replicated. Live theatre helps to promote social discourse, dialogue and potential social change. Theatre is a cultural phenomenon that demands that society examines itself in the mirror. We can study societal problems and attempt to find solutions.
Coming together as a community to listen to opposing points of view is necessary. Theatre promotes education and literacy. Studies have shown that students who participate in theatre do better in school. The government has suggested it will gradually wind it down to avoid suddenly making huge numbers of people unemployed, but no firm announcements have been made.
Without it, life will be very hard for the casual staff who keep playhouses going—the ushers, box-office staff, and bartenders—as well as for the actors, writers, and directors who typically work as freelancers.
The playwright Barney Norris says that his father, a professional pianist, told him when he became a writer that he should take notice of the number of his peers who dropped out in their early 30s, as they decided to start a family.
The real financial crunch point comes if the shutdown lasts beyond November, when most theaters open their Christmas show—in Britain, this is traditionally a pantomime or other family-friendly offering.
At local theaters and in the West End, audiences often book tickets for the Christmas show as early as February, and grandparents bring their grandchildren, instilling a theater-going habit that might last a lifetime. The loss of that revenue, and that chance to introduce youngsters to play-going, would be hugely destructive across the sector. This, too, could make theater more rarefied, as casual visitors are turned off the art form.
Aside from beloved landmark productions, what else will people want to see? Will they hunger for escapism, for farces and comedies and lighthearted romps, or will they expect playwrights to address the aftermath of the pandemic? Everyone is dreading the inevitable onslaught of work full of overwrought plague metaphors, and the possibility of stand-up comedy shows called Now Wash Your Hands. S everal artistic directors I spoke with referred to the same nightmare scenario: of reopening too early, with all the associated costs of set design, front-of-house staff, and actors, only to have to close again weeks later were another lockdown put in place.
Not only would they take a financial hit, but audiences might lose confidence about booking future performances. The West End relies heavily on visitors from outside London, and people often buy tickets for popular shows months, even years, in advance. The commercial-theater sector in particular is therefore largely downbeat about the prospect of reopening anytime this year. The budget issue is also why there is little appetite for the kind of social-distancing measures the government hopes will allow other businesses, such as shops and restaurants, to reopen.
Along with the live presence of an audience, group reception distinguishes performing arts theatre, dance, and music from plastic arts like sculpture. In the United States today, theatre exists on many levels: professional, semi-professional, educational, amateur, and personal performance. New York's Broadway and Off-Broadway are the center of theatrical activity in the United States, and by it we tend to judge the vitality and originality of American theatre in general.
However, professional regional theatres and touring productions bring shows to most urban centers across the country. In addition, many other cities have large numbers of active theatres: Chicago calls itself the "Second City" because of its theatrical activities being second in scale to New York, and Los Angeles and Toronto are almost as active.
New York's Off-Off-Broadway theatres, many local theatres in cities across the country , and most summer stock companies are semi-professional , in that they hire some professional unionP workers, pay others on a lower scale, and may also involve volunteer amateurs. Community theatres, formed entirely of amateurs, exist in most small towns as well as big cities in the United States, and most high schools offer at least one production a year by students.
These varied levels of theatrical activities provide opportunities for just about anyone to get involved on stage or behind the scenes.
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