Laurence Olivier once said, “In film, there is no performance. You just shoot a lot of rehearsals and pick the best.” For those of us writing for the boards, it’s not always about performance, either. It’s about the process. How we get from page to stage, and everything that happens in between. Something gets written. Then rehearsed (hopefully not to death). The beast first staggers to its feet, learning to walk before it can waltz. The written looks similar to the performed. Similar, but not identical. This is our inheritance, part of the collective lineage of making plays. A script is not a dry bit of papyrus that you just hydrate with water to add flesh and bone. It’s the people in theatre that makes the thing a play.
Some have said that theatre is dying, antiquated, a thing of the past. Theatre is of the past. And of the future. In the time of Julius Caesar, bleeding to death on the floor of the Roman Senate, people made theatre. While Si Ali Sakkat, an Arab man, was working to save the lives of Tunisian Jews in Nazi held Morocco, people made theatre. During the lunacy of the great frothing idiot, George Bush, theatre thrived. Theatre has survived tyrants, tragedy, and morons. Why? Because this is what we choose to do. Make theatre.
The theatre will out live us all. People will always feel the pull to band together and create the magic, the erotic charge of live performance. NASA is looking to colonize the moon in the next decades. And when humans trek forward, creating other worlds, theatre will go with them. Image a time when a young adventurer closes the door in her Sea of Tranquility apartment, clicks off her gravity boots, floats around her moon pad listening to Richard III, and says to herself, “Man, that Shakespeare knew his villains. We should do this play.”
San Francisco
By Scott McMorrow
Laurence Olivier once said, “In film, there is no performance. You just shoot a lot of rehearsals and pick the best.” For those of us writing for the boards, it’s not always about performance, either. It’s about the process. How we get from page to stage, and everything that happens in between. Something gets written. Then rehearsed (hopefully not to death). The beast first staggers to its feet, learning to walk before it can waltz. The written looks similar to the performed. Similar, but not identical. This is our inheritance, part of the collective lineage of making plays. A script is not a dry bit of papyrus that you just hydrate with water to add flesh and bone. It’s the people in theatre that makes the thing a play.
Some have said that theatre is dying, antiquated, a thing of the past. Theatre is of the past. And of the future. In the time of Julius Caesar, bleeding to death on the floor of the Roman Senate, people made theatre. While Si Ali Sakkat, an Arab man, was working to save the lives of Tunisian Jews in Nazi held Morocco, people made theatre. During the lunacy of the great frothing idiot, George Bush, theatre thrived. Theatre has survived tyrants, tragedy, and morons. Why? Because this is what we choose to do. Make theatre.
The theatre will out live us all. People will always feel the pull to band together and create the magic, the erotic charge of live performance. NASA is looking to colonize the moon in the next decades. And when humans trek forward, creating other worlds, theatre will go with them. Image a time when a young adventurer closes the door in her Sea of Tranquility apartment, clicks off her gravity boots, floats around her moon pad listening to Richard III, and says to herself, “Man, that Shakespeare knew his villains. We should do this play.”
smcmorrow@dramatistsguild.com