I finally managed to make it down to Toronto to see a performance of Wicked this past weekend with some friends. As with most things we tend to plan (and anyone who knows will attest to this), it took some time to agree on a time and day that worked for everyone, but I think that it was ultimately worth the wait. It’s hard to go wrong with a show like Wicked, but watching the show with a group of friends made it that much more enjoyable (and it was great seeing that everyone liked it). One thing I’ve thought about with other shows though, which is personally one of my favourite things about seeing a live stage show (whether it’s a musical or play) is that sense of engagement, or how the performance draws you in, in a way that other forms of entertainment can’t or don’t (I’m thinking specifically of television and movies – which is also probably why there’s so much interest nowadays in 3D TVs and films). But sitting there in your seat, watching as the action and events unfold on the stage below, really does make you feel like you’re observer of the various characters’ lives – and at the same time, you’re only something of an outsider, or a third party, so the relationship between the actors and the audience makes for a pretty interesting situation. Just as a case in point, you might know something that the characters don’t, based on things that happened in other scenes, or dialogue between other characters, but you’re just an observer. If you’ve taken a literature course, you might’ve run across the “omniscient narrator”, and that’s probably the best way to describe how it feels watching a play…the difference being that the narrator still has more control than the audience of a play, because he/she is the one telling the story, while a theatre-goer is just there for the ride. Granted, that might not sound entirely different from a movie you’d watch at a theatre, where you’re still watching things unfold in peoples’ lives (and if it’s any good, actually makes you feel something).
But in the end, a stage show will always be more immersive and absorbing than a movie because it plays on every one of a person’s senses to pull them in (and if you’re looking for them, give you loads of clues about the society that produced them). And then it all comes to an end with the curtain call, when the illusion of the performance is broken – be that as it may, seeing the crowd stand and hearing everyone’s applause as it fills the theatre, you can’t help but look around you and be amazed. Reading the text of a play is one thing (it can be dry, boring, distant…after all, stage shows weren’t really intended to be read, but to be seen) – but seeing it with your own eyes is an entirely different game…after all, it’s probably no accident that plays have managed to exist as method of performance for two thousand years!
P.S. Sorry about the title (I can just hear the groans) – but I couldn’t resist!
Musings of a Grad Student 