Theatre and Technology

I believe that technology has reached a dangerous point with theatre.  It has certainly reached a point where it is significantly affecting it.  This happens in a multitude of ways.  The first that comes to mind is the use of projections and videos as part of the set design.  There is a good bit of excitement over this new innovation in the design world of theatre, but for the most part I’m not on board with it.  Every time that I’ve seen projections or videos used, I found it to be mostly distracting from the show.  It took me out of the space that I was in, away from the performers, and into a world of media.  One of my favorite shows that I’ve gotten to see is Newsies.  In this show, they used projections a number of times.  One of the times, it was used for Jack Kelly to write the word “STRIKE” across a large chalkboard.  He pantomimed writing as the words appeared on the screen.  My question is, why couldn’t they use a real chalkboard with real chalk?  I believe it would have been much more effective than it was.  I found myself pulled between two worlds: one that was wrapped up in the story and another that was very aware of a screen pretending to be a chalkboard.  This is only one example out of many, but I really feel that it detracts from the quality of the performance.  I realize that theatre is trying to keep up with what is happening in the world, and—while this is important—I think that it is losing some of its integrity.  I don’t know what the answer is to this issue, but, with the growth of the film industry, social media, and other types of technology, theatre seems less accessible to people.  Of course, it isn’t any less accessible than it was before, but there are options that are much easier to gain access to.  If theatre molds itself into these more accessible forms of art, then what is the point of going to see a theatrical performance?  Theatre must keep the things that make it unique.  Things happening right there in front of the audience is what makes theatre, well, theatre. 

When I think of when media has presented something to me that I didn’t experience first person, I (along with most of America, probably) think of 9/11.  I was quite young when it happened and I had never been to New York City, so I really didn’t have any personal connection to the event.  It was mostly because I didn’t completely understand what was happening.  Several years later, in high school, I visited NYC for the first time.  We visited ground zero and, even though I understood the seriousness of it, it still seemed so distant and removed from me.  However, several years after that, my sophomore year of college, I lived in NYC for a year.  While I was there I made friends with people who had lived there for their entire lives.  One day, my friend Cindy happened to mention something about 9/11.  As we were walking down the streets of Manhattan, she told me her story.  Suddenly, the event wasn’t this far away thing that had happened to a bunch of strangers.  I felt the weight of it as this real life human person spoke her story to me.  Now, this wasn’t a performance, but it was a shared moment between humans with no other distracting influences.  Just a girl telling her story.  And that was powerful.