What is Theatre?

Let us try to understand what the Theatre is all about, why it has lasted so long, what it means to us. We know that it offers amusement and pleasure, but then so do lots of other things. Is there something special in itself that it offers us? Clearly there is, otherwise the Theatre would not have gone so long in so many different places. But what is it that is special about the Theatre?

True, when we see a play we see it with a number of other people; we form part of an audience. This is important, because we behave differently when we are part of an audience. If the play is funny, we laugh a great deal more than we should if we were by ourselves. If it is pathetic, we are more deeply moved just because a lot of other people are being moved too. And notice this, we cannot enjoy the play at all unless it is having the same effect upon us as it is having upon all the other members of the audience around us.

We have to share the feelings of a great many other people to enjoy a play properly, and this in itself is a good thing, particularly these days, when too many people, usually living in large cities, feel cut off and separate and lonely. To enjoy the Theatre we have to join it; and we feel better after it in the same way (though to less degree) that we feel better after attending some great public meeting.

But it is not the only peculiarity of the Theatre. A theatrical production consists of a number of players acting imaginary characters. Here are two quite different elements – the real actors, the imaginary characters. We have to accept them both. If we say we go to the play only to follow the fortunes of the imaginary characters, then we have to assume, what certainly is not true, that we do not know we are in a playhouse, looking at and listening to actors.

If we go to the other extreme and say we go to the play for the acting, then what becomes of the play itself, the imaginary life of its characters? Why should these unreal people and what happens to them have any interest for us, when we know it is all make-believe, just so many actors performing?

Both elements contribute to the experience, which is complex, involving two different levels of mind. One level is accepting the imaginary life of the play and its characters. The other level is concerned with the actual presentation of the play, with theatre, stage, actors, scenery, lighting and effects.

A very young child generally cannot accept the experience, assumes that what is happening on the stage is real, and is either frightened or bored, wanting to run up and down the aisle to play. A year or two later, the same child may be enchanted eagerly following the fortunes of the characters and yet at the same time being tremendously conscious of sitting snugly in the theatre with Mummy and Daddy. It is this eager responsiveness on both levels that makes children such a splendid audience. Adults who have completely forgotten their childhood, who have allowed all wonder and imagination to wither away, who are really incapable of making this double response, are never keen playgoers and usually dislike Theatre.

This, then, is dramatic experience, the result of an appeal to two different levels of the mind and of corresponding response on both levels. And as on one level we are fully conscious of being in a theatre, watching and listening to actors, it follows that on this level we accept whatever convention of theatrical writing, production and acting may be in vague; that all drama depends on some convention – a generally accepted pretense that something is something else. There are many different kinds of convention as we shall see; but all of them have and always have had one central purpose – to offer audiences that unique type of experience which we can call dramatic experience. It is to provide this that the Theatre exists. What must be remembered is that acting, like everything belonging to the Theatre, has a double aspect: the actor must be the character he is playing and also himself.

Without some truth to life, the costume comedy would not be engrossing: without some theatrical artificiality, the realistic play could not hold our attention. The Theatre must always be what we should never be – two-faced.

I. Point out the main ideas of the text. Say what you consider to be the central problem of the theatre.

II. Answer the following questions.

1) Do you think the theatre is important in the lives of people? Why?

2) Do you share the author’s opinion that “we behave differently when we are part of an audience”?

3) Do you agree that the theatre possesses a “dual nature”? Prove your point of view.

4) What does the author want to inform his readers of as far as truth of life and theatrical artificiality are concerned? What does he try to caution them against?

III. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Give your reasons.

1) Representation without any scenery is too symbolic.

2) Without realistic details a lot of general spectators will fail to understand the message and sometimes even the plot of the play.

3) The level of imagination is not equal in all the spectators and the theatre is hardly the place to begin to develop it.

IV. Give a talk on the theatre you like \ dislike \ the ideal theatre as you see it. Use the topical vocabulary.

Read and translate Text II.