The Presence of Theatre
Earlier last week, a Twitter thread gained traction amongst theatre lovers. In the tweet that started it all, Benjamin Dreyer (author of New York Times Bestseller Dreyer’s English) asked users to “name a nonstandard sensory experience you enjoyed in the (live, that is) theater.”
The replies are still coming in, but a few of my favorite so far are “the scent of old school fog,” “watching Jonathan Groff’s spit spray the first three rows of Spring Awakening first previews,” “seeing nudity in live theatre … milder nudity than I might see on film any day, but somehow 100x more jolting,” “feeling plant tentacles drop down on our shoulders from the ceiling after Little Shop of Horrors,” “being given a pierogi by a Great Comet cast member right before the show started,” “the smell of cooking bacon in Our Town,” and, finally, one of Dreyer’s own submissions, “Ken Watanabe making a King and I exit so close to me I could smell whatever amberish scent he was wearing.”
I’ve seen two shows since the lockdown in March, which is unheard of because I’m usually sitting in several different theater’s houses every month. Both were community theatre productions and both were with cast and audience members socially distanced and masked. It wasn’t the same. I was grateful to be sitting in an audience again, but I wanted to hug my friends afterwards and watch them belt without having to constantly shift in my seat to see around the glare from the light reflecting off their face shields.
However, I’ve participated in and seen dozens of online shows – recordings, over zoom, even a musical told over podcast episodes. It’s not the same either. Over the last several months, I’ve been working through why it isn’t the same in my mind and I’ve been able to come up with some answers.
Reading this thread with my morning coffee, the final puzzle piece fell into place and this incredible melancholy feeling rose from somewhere deep down inside of me. I realized that the magic of theatre is in its transitory nature, and it’s heightened because it causes you to use more than just two senses.
Think about it. When watching a movie, what senses are engaged? Compare that with the last show you went to. What differences are there? Even if you had seats in the “nosebleed” section, something was different. At the Fox Theatre, you could smell pies baking before Waitress. If you were lucky enough to see Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812, maybe you were even able to taste a pierogi before the show.
We all know that theatre is different because you can’t pause or rewind like with movies or tv shows, but it’s different than even seeing a movie in a theater. There’s something about watching something play out before your eyes that adds to the overall nature of the art, even more than the fact that more senses are engaged. There’s the edge of making it to your seats before the house lights go down. The playbill getting wrinkled as you clutch it in your hands. The actors making entrances and exits via the aisles beside or underneath you.
The presence is probably the best way to describe it. As we watch people create magic right in front of us, we’re right there with them. We get to (almost) experience what they’re creating with them – we hear the same sounds, smell the same smells, sometimes even taste the same things.
And then there’s a third aspect that adds a whole new level of intensity to it: The circumstances surrounding the experience. This is probably best described in this response in the thread from Grace Gormann:
“I saw Cynthia Erivo in The Color Purple the night after Philadro Castille and Alton Sterling were murdered by police. The emotion in the room was palpable and her voice was a PHYSICAL presence. I felt it so intensely at one point that I scooted up the back of my chair in shock.”
Other media can be impacted or informed by what’s going on around it, but it can quickly become outdated. However, theatre is different. There will never be another performance like the one Cynthia gave that night.
It’s a blessing and a curse, being a fan of something so ever-changing and turbulent and active. I don’t think I’ll ever have the words for it, and I think that’s a good thing.
