Imagine the scene. You arrive early to make sure of a parking space. You go into the foyer, mingle, show your tickets, and buy a programme (for Sweeney Todd, actually.) Then you enter the auditorium. It is dimly lit. It is full of theatrical smoke representing fog. The curtains are open ready for the prologue, so the first set is ready, though on stage time is standing still, just waiting. You are shown to your seats by somebody who appears to be in costume and in role, and you are momentarily confused - am I late? Has the show started?
The idea of getting rid of the first big barrier between players and audience - the proscenium arch (itself a relatively modern invention) - goes back at least to the 1960s, when rival telly adopted the proscenium arch (which it still hasn't learned to let go of). Apron stages, theatre-in-the-round became popular because they were theatrical devices to draw audiences into the drama, instead of just spectating it. And the curtain - that big symbolic barrier - went at the same time.
Theatre is all about engaging an audience's attention, and preparing them for that suspension of disbelief which is at the centre of that magical world.
And directors are very good at their job. They know that audiences have learned all the old tricks, so they find new ones, which is why the best of them rise to the eminence of theatres like The Swan in Stratford-on-Avon. Michael Bogdanov's production of Howard Brenton's new translation of Faust in 1995 threw out the fixed, eye-level stage as the common factor in all theatre until then. He used the space above the floor as well, so actors worked from platforms suspended from ropes. and even from trapezes, so that the idea of 'set' itself was no longer a certainty to hold onto.
The production of Sweeney I went to wasn't at the Swan, however. It was in our village hall. But what it had in common with the Faust was the genius of a director who knows exactly what she or he is doing, has a very precise vision of what is going to take place on the night, and, crucially, knows how to achieve it.
If this sounds like a eulogy, it is very far from it, for the vision of directors has now been brought to nothing. They can get rid of the proscenium, they can get rid of the curtain, but there's one thing they can't get rid of - silly, intrusive bureaucracy, and the 'ealth an' safety message that has to be read out to audiences before every show in case somebody in the theatre is totally illiterate or has just been smuggled into the country from Bolokistan and doesn't understand green or EXIT.
I had the job of introducing an evening of song by two choirs last week, and momentary madness took hold of me, and somehow the 'ealth an' safety announcement got sung (to an Anglican chant). It seemed to go down rather well with an audience which by now has got rather piddled off having its intelligence insulted every time it goes into a Big Room.
And - I haven't been arrested yet! So I am now working on a four-part version of the same announcement for unaccompanied choir, and a friend is setting it for female vocalist and small jazz combo. Versions for comb-and-paper and full symphony orchestra will be available soon. The 'ealth an' safety announcement is so important, to a bureaucrat, that it really ought to be the star of the show.
But then, as the Romans used to say: "ars longa - vita brevis" - fat arse, short life.
And quite right too.
PS If you ever meet a bureaucrat, please give him or her a copy of Bleak House. It has some rather long words in it which they will love, even though they won't know what they mean.
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