I remember the very first time I went to see a professional piece of theatre. The show was Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance”, and I sat in between my parents, apparently with my jaw dropped for the entire evening. There was something so electric and satisfying watching a performance that you could almost reach out and touch. The voices, costumes, sets, lighting and sound were tangible, and for that moment I was transported. And the reason for this transportation was simple. I was witnessing a moment that would never happen like that ever again. The fine art of theatre is its immediacy.
Film and television are permanent; a permanent record, something I am sure actors wish was not the case and could erase at times. But although audiences can derive their own meaning and interpretation from a film, they are still all watching exactly the same footage. The footage will never change, even if their interpretation does. Whereas the opposite is true for theatre. Every single night, a piece of theatre will change, albeit subtly, but change it will nonetheless. Just as the actors are tangible to the audience, so is the audience to the actor. And that is what makes it such a special experience for the actor also. They have an immediate response from the audience. It may not always be the response they were expecting, but it is a response. Different moments in the show will mean different things to different audiences. The audience and the actor are working together.
Each night, an audience brings with it a different energy, a different expectation. On top of that though, an actor has other variables to work with on a nightly basis. A script, fellow actors, their own daily woes, set changes, costume changes and lighting/sound cues. I am sure at some point in time, everyone has witnessed a moment during a night out at the theatre where something goes horribly wrong. And there is an anticipation, a nervous excitement as to how the actors will handle the situation. An actor forgets a line and an awkward silence follows. A set change does not quite happen and the actor finds himself unable to enter the stage or worse still, stuck on the stage. A piece of clothing falls off mid dance move (which has unfortunately happened to me), and the actor is forced to deal with it in a composed manner. Not to mention the all too common experience of one actor laughing uncontrollably whilst the other desperately attempts to keep the scene flowing in some manner of normality and professionalism. The audience is extremely aware that they are witnessing something unique and potentially unlikely to happen again. It’s thrilling and memorable because it is real. It is immediate. The actor must adapt. The audience is witness. The show has changed.
I will never forget a tour of “Cabaret” that I was performing in around Australia, and on September 11 2002, there was a bomb threat in our theatre in Sydney. The second act did not commence and instead the cast was whisked away in full costume, to a nearby hotel, whilst the audience was taken out into the street. When the second act finally began over one hour later, the half of the audience that stayed were desperate for comic relief. For those who are unaware of the story of Cabaret, the second act takes on a rather dark tone as the rise of Nazism takes its toll on the lead characters and they are forced to face an unknown future. It hardly provided the audience with the opportunity to laugh. The story also brought home the reality of war, and what we as a society at that time, were facing once again… an unknown future. However, the audience as one, laughed at any moment they could, appropriate or inappropriate, and the result was a dramatically different second act. We as a cast found ourselves adapting slightly to their energy. Never a word was spoken, but a need was understood.
The same can not be said for film. We can not change a film even subtly. When we watch a film, we are seeing the best take. We are watching something that has been manipulated. The chance of something going technically wrong is impossible, because unless it is the ulterior motive of the film, it will inevitably end up on the cutting room floor. It does not help or further the storyline. And although a theatre director would also like to remove anything from going wrong, because at times it also does not help the storyline, they can not. And that is why the theatre is such a beautiful art. It can not be manipulated or controlled. Everything has been done to ensure the piece runs as smoothly as possible but once the curtain goes up, it can no longer be interfered with. As the famous saying goes, the show must go on.
It seems fitting to end with a quote by Oscar Wilde. “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”