Will Theater be Revived When Netflix Gets Old? | Big Think

Will Theater be Revived When Netflix Gets Old?
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What's the point of plays in the age of digital cinema? According to Sir David Hare (who knows a thing or two about good theatre), theater is uniquely valuable because it demands concentration of its audience. "You’re hijacked for two hours and you’ve got to turn off your cellphone. You’ve got to stop talking to your neighbor and you’ve actually all got to examine something together."

One cannot possibly overstate how momentous a live performance can be. A powerful play spurs action. It encourages critical thought and discourse. British theater is thriving at the moment and it's because a generation of keen, talented writers are presenting weighty, contrary ideas about society and politics.
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DAVID HARE:
Sir David Hare is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.

In the West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).

Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.

Hare's latest book, titled The Blue Touch Paper, is a memoir of his early life and career.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sir David Hare: The reason the theater is uniquely valuable is because you have to concentrate. In other words, you’re hijacked for two hours and you’ve got to turn off your cellphone. You’ve got to stop talking to your neighbor and you’ve actually all got to examine something together. Now some people would be bored and some people will look away while it’s happening and other people will cough; another will head straight for the exit. And some people will not choose to focus. But at a good play, what you get is this extraordinary act of concentration.

I suppose what I’m talking about is scrutiny. In other words, it’s one thing to look at an idea on the page and run it through your brain. But it’s a completely different thing to be in a room where a whole group of people make a moral examination together of actions and words. Now clearly for the next generation after mine who were brought up on television, cinema, video, the moving image, beginning of computers — they weren’t really interested in theater. And in England, at least, it’s not a very distinguished bunch of playwrights that follow mine. However, the young, who are now bored stiff with computers, bored stiff with film, bored stiff with television. They actually have taken up theater again. And what we have is a brilliant crop of young writers, a lot of them female, working in Britain. And the theater is being regenerated by the young. And particularly at a time when public discourse, in Britain at least, is so impoverished. And so one-track, you know. We, now, for anyone to descend from orthodoxy about neoliberal economics. That the only way of the world advancing is apparently through deregulated markets, cheap labor, you know. If you say anything else, if you start talking about workers’ rights, you’re now treated like a lunatic in Britain. They want to put you in a white coat and take you away. And so the theater’s the place where people can look at ideas again.

There’s a very beautiful saying of Raymond Williams, who was my old tutor. And Raymond Williams once said if people cannot have justice officially, they will have it unofficially. And unofficially, at the moment, means by going to the theater.,...

[GarioTheRock]

Everything he said, besides perhaps the generalization of the "young people" being bored stiff as an entirety, is correct. I grew up with artists, I'm friends with artists and writers (I'm a writer myself, and not just friends with artists, relax, I'm as bourgeois as the average homeless Kodiak grizzly bear) and this is a discussion point which has been brought up more often than ever, theatre that is. All those indie shops and alternative coffee joints, apparently, some of those 1/3rd shaved, 2/3rds mullet latte drinkers are apparently playwrites - and really good ones too, not nearly as much drama as with old plays and such, but the ponderances are more head scratching and so not-up-their-own-ass that they leave even the most efficient thinkers (I am efficient, but I'm thorough so my speed does not match that of speed-readers who go through a hundred pages in 10 minutes, but I'd ace a test if some random stranger gave me one, a hilarious bit of practice envisioning such a thing)...thinking.

[ValaShen]

Technology these days is about convenience more than anything, whereas theater is about the experience. Neither will disappear, but attention is always swaying from one thing to the next. The powers that be whether they be government, big corporations or whatever are more aware now than ever of the effect information can have. Back in the day, Shakespeare could take a jab of political figures in plays but in today's world you are almost always associated with a certain group if you take shots at a particular person. The news is going to present things a certain way. Politicians will speak a certain way. People will speak a certain way. I feel that in order to get the unofficial justice, you would have to sift through so much information because almost everyone is playing an angle. For example, choosing a credible news source.

[Satsaru]

That's funny, because the political situation is literally the polar opposite of what he's saying is happening in the U.K. Emphasizing personal rights as opposed to certain demographics as a _class_ having certain rights or protection gets you looked at funny, people have even been fired for that.

[sorcereo]

Theatre never died and Netflix won't get old. Entertainment and art only get more varied as we progress as a culture.
Everyone just needs to learn to share that space in people's hearts/minds for it.
On another note, you can make an effort to scrutinize anything you watch. I'm not a huge public event person; though it is a quite the experience when I'm watching something with either a large group of people or a small group of family/friends.

[sunnaerica]

Theatre has always been going strong. Theatre WILL always be a strong medium. Online entertainment, streaming entertainment, film, AND theatre can coexist. They are all valid mediums and can bring more color to our lives simultaneously - they don't have to compete.

[AA-ezcn]

VR theatre, maybe. Streamed performances experienced over the internet with something like an Oculus Rift. So you always have the best seats and can get as close as you want.

[Plusimurfriend]

netflix wont get old. it will expand more and more. unless some other similar service comes along and takes the throne. Theaters are a thing of the past and most people feel the most comfortable at home. Theaters are still doing great and they try to innovate, but in the end it will die out.

[SeveringJuan]

The problem with theater IMO is that an expensive and unapproachable art, is filled with things that only people that go to see plays knows and understands (though sometimes tv series do that you can always rewind or see the episode again), this only gets worst in wold plays and contemporary plays.
I don't know if this doesn't happen in UK/USA but from where Im from, it does.

[wyattarthur]

Netflix is not going to die until there is a Theater and Chill

[twinkacast]

As an 19 year old American college student in the northwest I've noticed that with a few exceptions most people use modern tech to the same end. When you think of video games most people don't think if its potential for interactive story and when done well it really is amazing. Theater just isn't something that seems to hold interest to manny around where I live.

[adnanilyas]

What I suspect is more likely is that the movie industry simply has no openings to allow new and true creativity to flourish from younger directors and writers. There's a sense that you have to be conservative to make a really successful and popular movie - play to the audiences tastes, if you will. But theater, on the other hand, has a space that needs to be filled. These people are simply filling it. While they may be making theater better than it has been in some decades, that doesn't mean it will be popular.

[pikkuadi]

Bored stiff with internet? You know there are other sites than Wikipedia?

[DrakeFellwing]

... I don't know where you are, but theater's still strong in Austin.

[squall]

Theater should adapt to the technology. It could potentially make more money from Streaming live performance online.

[aperson]

What if we combine the theatre with virtual reality technology? Everyone could get the theatre environment right in their homes. The actors can also use this technology as well to perform.

[MarkHidden]

Who is the guy with the time machine, interviewing people in the past?

[curtishammer]

I wish I could believe in what this man is saying, I really do. But theatre is expensive and people consume screen-based media specifically because they are bored and don't want to put effort into thinking or experiencing complex emotion. For less than a third of the price of going to my local community theater for 2 and a half hours, I can watch all the movies and programming on Netflix that I want for a month. I don't know how things are in Britain, but in America, film budgets are at an all-time high, Star Wars VII is about to break box office records, and theatre is still considered a form of entertainment that only previous generations and the upper class enjoy with any regularity.

[arrowfox]

as someone who works in theatre and live entertainment, I havnt seen it die

[ion]

"Netflix" interpreted as "on-demand" will be the primary channel for media consumption (and already is depending on how you dice up definitions). Refer any recent consumer media survey eg. Deloitte 2015.

David's view that "the young are bored stiff with computers, film, television" is woefully misguided. Business models are quickly evolving to keep young impressionable eyeballs glued to a screen and the accompanying adverts. Reasoning that the unique value of theatre is in forcing an environment of concentration is patronising.

I support and welcome new theatre talent. The simple answer to the title question is that on-demand consumption becoming dominant is a progressive step and will never "get old". Artists that recognise what the information age offers in disseminating ideas and experiences (see recent developments in VR) are those that will shape future generations.

[happytx]

That's why I like watching a movie in a theater. No distraction. Live theater is something special.