Why does it have to be live?

Last Saturday night I saw a play at Rubicon Theatre Company, the local professional theatre in my hometown of Ventura, CA. The play was called Other Desert Cities, written by Jon Robin Baitz. The acting was pretty good, the set looked cool, and the script was well-written. It’s a well-known play. I feel like it was an example of the quintessential 4^th-wally American “realism” theatre.

But for me, it was like taking a vitamin, or eating vegetables. I didn’t really want to, but I knew that it was good for me to watch in the long run.

I definitely felt like something was missing. I think it was because there were no surprises. I expected everything that happened, and in the way that it happened.

There was no blue paint, pink goo, huge silver balloon dogs, swinging microphone-cameras, food being thrown, fire, dirt, large amounts of blood, bodies dropping from the sky – none of that. It was so incredibly safe.

It makes sense to me now that the above-mentioned list is what makes live theatre exciting. Why else does theatre need to be live? TV and movies can often tell clean-cut narrative stories in a better way, so theatre has to become something else. What can live theatre provide an audience that a screen can’t? All of that stuff. And more. I want more experimentation in my theatre-watching. And now I want to get really messy in my work. I don’t want to be perfect anymore. I want to mess something up. I want to surprise myself.

I’ll never be able to watch theatre in the same way again. I will always be waiting for that extra surprise. On one hand, my theatre-watching is ruined forever (although it was hard for me to watch theatre to begin with because I’d rather be doing it). But on the other hand, I’m excited and ready to take what I’ve learned and apply it, in order to make REALLY GOOD THEATRE. Even if it is a traditional 4^th-wally “realism” play. I guess what I am trying to say is that I think theatre can still be just as exciting without all of that wonderful spectacle stuff that Berlin whetted my appetite for, but I haven’t seen it here yet. Live theatre can be good if the acting is good, and has that same quality of being messy and surprising. I don’t think I saw that on Saturday night. But I’m ready to find it. Or create it myself.

And another thing! The curtain call was so incredibly short. The actors came out and bowed twice as a company, then left. I felt like we owed them more, no matter how we felt about the show. Maybe that’s something I can get used to again.