This week's prompt sounds very similar to another classic arguement that affects my other major in school, journalism. Just like everyone wonders what a student will do once they graduate with a theatre degree (we will work, obviously, idiots), people often smirk and think they have the upper hand, finding out I'm also a journalism major and snarkily replying, "You know, newspapers and magazines are dying out too. Then what are you gonna do?" I will adapt, idiots. You're telling me no one will ever want to read news in any form? People will always want tangible news in magazine or newspaper form, but even if those mediums slowly lose their importance in our world, I can still tweet the news, Facebook the news, do something to get it out there. I will work.
I relate this example, then, to the first question in the prompt. I don't think theatre will ever be so diluted that it melts into other forms such as film, images, and technology. I'm not saying that these elements won't be heavily incorporated into works of theatre and performance art, but theatre will never cease to exist as an art form. It's ironic, actually, that we fear losing theatre to film, as theatre-to-film performance is a growing interest in the United States. National Theatre Live and Fathom Events are two increasingly popular ways to see theatre that would otherwise be unavailable to someone, especially someone in little old Louisiana. NTL and Fathom record live performances of plays, Shakespeare, ballet, opera, and concerts and screen them in movie theaters. I've seen Noël Coward's Private Lives, a show from London, from the comfort of Cinemark Perkins Rowe. The Manship seems to have a piece of streamed theatre or ballet happening every week. Instead of worrying if theatre is being diluted into other forms, embrace it! In a world with an increasingly staggering amount of technology, there's no use fighting it, so make it work to your advantage.
These screenings, then, would ideally make people want to rush out to their local theatre and see what they just watched on screen right in front of their eyes in real life. It would hopefully make patrons even hungrier for a live performance. There's something about the sizzling energy of the shared space between audience and actor that you just can't beat. Actors can mess up, things can go wrong, an audience might be in stitches or silence, and all these if's make live theatre an invincible art form. We will never lose the only truly present artistic expression because it demands to be seen. The demand might be from a slightly smaller audience that a few years ago, but it still exists, and it is our job as artists and creators to pull them back in. Adapt, maybe, but never give up. Something stops living because we let it, not because someone else kills it.
I think an interesting example of "imagined memory" that rings true for me is the media's presentation of Hurricane Katrina. Although I lived in Baton Rouge at the time, the media's presentation of New Orleans made it look foreign to me. I grew up there for a few years, but I suddenly did not recognize the images I was being shown day after day. I think the average American viewer could not fully realize the effects of the storm and how it devastated a city and state. You didn't really get it unless you were there. I knew what was happening, because I heard story after story from family members who had to evacuate and from my dad who was back and forth because of his work. Even then, it was hard to visualize literal feet of water inside of a home, a flooded city. The media showed these images daily, but it was too easy to separate yourself and just watch as a bystander. I think this relates to my first part of the answer between recorded theatre in movie theaters as opposed to live theatre in playhouses. There's a separation, a comfortable distance that changes the way you view and feel about art. The media serves as our recording of Private Lives, but having to evacuate your home, losing your house, living in that hell is seeing theatre live. There is a frantic energy that is simply not felt between audience and screen. It makes it safe. No amount of media sensationalism can give you what it's like to actually be somewhere witnessing and experiencing something.
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