-
Conclusion: Revivals Versus Remakes
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Conclusion Revivals Versus Remakes Belief in the future growth of an artistic, penetrating and emotionally arresting cinema is not antagonistic to an equally firm belief in the future development of the theatre. —Allardyce Nicoll, Film and Theatre Subsequent performances “revive” old plays, but directors “remake” films, a distinction that underscores the human element of the former mode and the technological /mechanical basis of the latter. I began this book by questioning the valorization of theater as a “live” event over film and television, but notions of revival begin to reintroduce sneakily the significance of “liveness” by implying that the drama needs only to add the actors in order to reconstitute as a dynamic form, as if the text lies in wait and wants to be resuscitated by performance. If only it were that simple. The revival of a play may bring an old text back to life onstage, but many dead parts remain encrusted upon a proposed new production such as ancient and antiquated dramatic conventions; theater architecture; cultural standards, values, and expectations; technologies; and literature of the time as well as the author’s subsequent and total literary output. Theater directors, charged with the responsibility for staging a successful event, interpret, adapt, and cut loose the historical ties upon the text and start a fresh production practically from scratch in order to meet the expectations and demands of a contemporary audience. Future theatrical productions of dramatic texts will succeed not insofar as they do what the playwright may have originally intended, but to the extent that they champion spectacle and explore the possibilities for simultaneous action within a homogenous space. Screenwriters imagine their films taking place in various locations . All the world is a potential stage for their work. For playwrights, too, although one stage is the entire world of their work, they also write with a specific space in mind. It may be big, it may be small; it might be a traditional proscenium , or an arena, or a thrust; it might be a laboratory, a living room, a hallway; it might be outside, on the street, in the park, on a truck, in the field. Still, playwrights imagine a specific space for their work, just as screenwriters do, and they write for something to happen within that space. A performance in the mind sparks a production that may never be realized on a stage, yet the reality of that unseen space informs and empowers the entire drama. Mise-en-scène, the discovery and development of spectacle, makes a performance more meaningful and exciting than a private read. The director hosts an event and invites the playwright, designers, actors, technicians, and, finally, the audience to come together at a certain time and a certain space to partake in a performance. Like a good party host, the director mingles among the participants and sparks interactions that would not happen without the presence of someone to bring disparate people and groups together. The theatrical space might not be what the playwright initially envisioned. Circumstances in the world that sparked the creative effort may no longer be accessible. The world of the play may no longer seem as topical to the playwright as it did at the time of composition . Nevertheless, the director determines a context for the play to happen now and projects an imagined work into dimensional space. The director sets the play in color, with movement, bodies in space, lighting, words emanating toward a listening audience. The theater beckons: everything that is to happen will happen on the stage. And then? After? Nothing. The ghost light presides over the empty space. Long after a production has been wheeled out to the dumpster, after the party wanes, only the memories and the favors (posters, photos, programs) of it remain and it begins to take on a life of its own in the recollections and accounts of the participants and onlookers. Always in the process of dying, theater, that Fabulous Invalid, cannot be revived. It always remains, though, for playwrights, directors, designers, actors, technicians, and a willing audience to remake it. Revivals Versus Remakes / 171 [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:02 GMT) ...