New media - its implications for old media

Having recently sat through two very different but equally awful (in my view) pieces of theatre (I won't be naming names, but they were major theatre companies!) I started to reflect on what theatre needs to do in order to remain relevant.

The problem that theatre has, as a medium, is that we now have conflicting expectations of what we want from live drama. On the one hand, being as film and television literate as we are, we expect realistic performances and a certain degree of "drama", or conflict/tension in the script. On the other hand, realism in theatre is in many ways a dead medium, because so many other mediums do it better (espeically television). With the advent of online docos and videos, this has shifted even further, as we now have a medium that emphasises the "voyeuristic", thus making the realism seem even more real.

What theatre can offer, as opposed to newer mediums, is a greater suspension of disbelief, as well as an added tension to the audience's experience because they are watching the drama unfold live. Thus, absurdism and surrealism work, arguably, better in a live theatrical space than they do on the cinema screen, where people's expectations for believability are higher. The other genre (for want of a better word) that theatre excels at is the live thriller. Not necessarily in a conventional murder mystery kind of way, but when you see events unfold live on stage, there are great opportunities to build up tension, and the audience starts to emit tension, as well as feeling it, so it loops back on itself and makes for an exciting evening.

One of the best examples of the latter genre of theatre that I've ever seen was Pillowman, by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, which was presented by the MTC last year. I usually dislike the MTC's work, but this piece was utterly compelling. It combined elements of surrealism and absurdism into a show about murder, torture and childrens' stories. Apparently many of the MTC subscribers (read, the Blue Rinse Set) walked out. That is my definition of great theatre!