Theatre/Spectacle (fwd)

[susan heald]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:57:14 +0000
From: Mark Fisher <fisher at easynet.co.uk>
To: susan heald <heald at CC.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: Re: Theatre/Spectacle
 
>Eric Grace refers to the "difference between spectacle and what I think
>of as theatre."  What is that difference?  I've been thinking a lot about
>"spectacle" lately, and would be interested in how its difference from
>theatre is theorized.
>Susan Heald
 
Could it be the difference between active and passive? Spectacle, rather
like cinema (except that cinema does it much more naturally), does not
demand an imaginative response from the audience - the audience is passive.
"Theatre", on the other hand, has to engage the audience as part of the
creative act - the audience is active.
 
I recently saw The Phantom of the Opera and there's nothing really wrong
with it - that is, it would be hard to hate it - but I find it quite
uninteresting. Technically it is supremely accomplished, but theatrically
it is dull. It washes over the audience, smoothly and painlessly, but
leaves it exactly as it was when it entered the theatre - that is, it's a
passive audience.
 
The shame of it is that the audience is huge - here in Scotland, where the
show is running at a 3000-seat theatre and has at least a couple more
months to run, it will be seen by anything up to one-in-ten of the Scottish
population. Most of them will be satisfied, but I'd argue that they could
be having many more fulfiling evenings elsewhere.
 
Mark Fisher (fisher at easynet.co,uk)