The Dead Theatre
How many times have you sat in the theatre wishing it were over? Personally, it’s practically every show. Why? Because it’s like watching paint dry. The only time that it gets interesting is when something goes wrong, because suddenly the show is happening in the here and now, it becomes alive and immediate, like it sudden got defib paddles to the chest.
It is curious to me that theatre is still lauded for the immediacy of its live performances. I’m not sure that I’ve seen a live performance for a very long time. You see, I believe that the theatre died, it grieves me greatly to tell you that the theatre passed away while we looked on.
The scary thing is that it seems that no one noticed that the very element that makes the performance live and therefore be thrilling to watch, is more often than entirely missing.
Liveness requires 1) Immediacy – the sense that things are happening for the first time, and 2) The potential for spontaneity, for something unplanned to occur, in every performance.
There is nothing live about the average professional theatre production, most so-called live theatre is in fact missing immediacy and the potential for spontaneity, and so I’m afraid I have to conclude that theatrical performance is dead.
The very way that we rehearse seems to have killed it. Those methods seem to ensure that the performance is dead long before the curtain even goes up.
Over time, the audience (including our critics) have learned to love a lie, they’ve learned to think of this as ‘live’ theatre, they believe that anything could happen, and it could, but it won’t, it won’t because we our established performance practises insure against it.
We actually prevent it from living by rehearsing something over and over again in order to ‘get it right’. Then we insist that despite practising all the immediacy out of it, that we can still give it the feeling of immediacy.
A truly live performance would maintain a strong element of improvisation, a real immediacy, and a real impulsive spontaneity. But that scares the shit out of actors, writers and directors – and well it should, because if something is live, immediate and spontaneous, it can go terribly wrong, but if you know how to rehearse for a living performance, it can also go spectacularly right.
It isn’t easy to achieve, it requires disciplined and well-trained actors, but it is possible.
It’s possible for the actors to learn how to step onto the stage each night and give a fresh performance, filled with the unknown, filled with moments of impulses followed.
Can the audience tell the difference? Well, they have been eating shit in the theatre for a long time, the dead theatre has become what they accept as ‘theatre’, so they will struggle in the beginning, but yes, they can feel the difference.
Our theatre can be brought back to life, with techniques that help the actors live from moment to moment on stage, not repeating the same old tired recitation which quickly lose the spark of life.
This is my mission, to return the theatre to its most awesome. To create performances that are alive, awake, spontaneous, impulsive and immediate, while always serving the writer’s intention and being in line with the director’s vision. The actors can improvise in the moment and still do this. But it requires training.
Is it possible? Yes, it is. And this is the just the beginning of a mission to convince the world of theatre that theatre can change for the better.
But first, you have to accept something very difficult, that the way we train and rehearse with actors doesn’t work if you want theatre to live. That’s the tough part, because no one wants to admit that they are doing it wrong. Who am I to say this? A concerned mourner with an idea of how it can live, and a way that works.
You’re not, but if you want theatre to live again, there are things we can do to bring it back to life.
If you want to know more, get in touch.