The Cinematic Theater (review)

In recent years, various theatre practitioners and scholars have posed the following questions: What is the future of the theatre, and how might the theatre compete with other entertainments in our technology-driven society? Babak Ebrahimian's The Cinematic Theater offers the controversial solution that the theatre should become "cinematic." Ebrahimian writes in his introduction that for the past hundred years, theatre and film "have been in dialogue and in active exchange with one another. Yet, the theater has still not fully embraced the cinema" (3). In order for the theatre to do this it must, according to the author, become a "theater of images, sound, and technology highly appropriate for the twenty-first century" (9). His proposed theatre "has a cinematic (film) form and structure, and functions (operates) as if it were a film" (7). Ebrahimian spends the remainder of his book fleshing out these ideas and providing examples from both film and theatre in theory and in practice.

The first three chapters of the book provide the theoretical foundations, while the concluding chapter offers a comprehensive definition of the "cinematic theater" and illustrates it in practice. Ebrahimian begins by admitting that the theatre relies on presence and works on a three-dimensional plane, whereas film relies on distance and remains flat or two-dimensional. He argues that the theatre should compensate for these differences by applying Sergei Eisenstein's montage theory in addition to spatial distancing, which will redefine and reinterpret the theatre in cinematic terms.

In chapter 1, "Precursors to the Cinematic Theater," the author posits that images are not only "today's language," but are also "the language of theater and cinema" (11). To further support his assertion that image functions as language, Ebrahimian turns to the work of Jean Baudrillard and his analysis of the hyperreal, before transitioning into a discussion of auteur theory. He references Bonnie Marranca's The Theatre of Images (1977) as a seminal study of the image-centered director-auteur before turning to an analysis of the directorial work of Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman. While Ebrahimian's analysis of Wilson and Foreman is interesting, he admits that neither of their canons is truly "cinematic" because "they have actively been shunning and / or redefining the real and realism" rather than attempting to discover "neorealism" (31), the crux of the author's "cinematic theater." Unfortunately, Ebrahimian introduces, but does not fully explicate his preference for this genre.

The author then turns his attention to the physical manifestation of the "cinematic theater" in chapter 2, "Space and Structure." To facilitate his discussion he relies on Michel Foucault's description of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, Gilles Deleuze's notion of fold, and the idea of the German Raum. According to Ebrahimian, cinematic theater is panoptic because it "is a frame [sic] and screened space, lit such that the actors never see the audience" (39). Deleuze's fold contributes to the cinematic theater's unique treatment of time and space because, as Peter Eisenman describes, the fold marks something's "thisness as an event or a spectacle" (42). Finally, Ebrahimian employs the German scene-design notion of Raum, which is "a space / room designed independently from the action, the interpretation of the director, and the sounds of the text" (44). While his treatment of each of these theorists / theories is brief, his ideas are intriguing and highly relevant. Ultimately, his account of the panopticon, fold, and Raum allows Ebrahimian to further explore ways in which a cinematic theater may be physically manifest as "a panoptic space constructed by a screened, distanced, and framed proscenium. It needs to be a distanced space defined by a fold and containing a Raum" (46).

Before closing the chapter, Ebrahimian traces the theoretical conception of "tableaux," beginning with Diderot through Bertolt Brecht (gestus) and Sergei Eisenstein (montage of attractions). In the conclusion of chapter 2, Ebrahimian parallels his concept of cinematic theatre structure with that of Brechtian epic structure, specifically highlighting the importance of tableaux to each form. Although Ebrahimian's treatment of...