![]() All through the world theatre audiences are dwindling. The condition of the Deadly Theatre at least is fairly obvious. But it is only if we see that deadliness is deceptive and can appear anywhere, that we will become aware of the size of the problem. As this is the form of theatre we see most often, and as it is most closely linked to the despised, much-attacked commercial theatre it might seem a waste of time to criticize it further. The Deadly Theatre can at first sight be taken for granted,īecause it means bad theatre. ![]() Sometimes within one single moment, the four of them, Holy, Rough, Immediate and Deadly intertwine. ![]() Sometimes they are hundreds of miles apart, the Holy in Warsaw and the Rough in Prague, and sometimes they are metaphoric: two of them mixing together within one evening, within one act. Sometimes these four theatres really exist, standing side by side, in the West End of London, or in New York off Times Square. I will try to split the word four ways and distinguish four different meanings-and so will talk about a Deadly Theatre, a Holy Theatre, a Rough Theatre and an Immediate Theatre. We talk of the cinema killing the theatre, and in that phrase we refer to the theatre as it was when the cinema was born, a theatre of box office, foyer, tip-up seats, footlights, scene changes, intervals, music, as though the theatre was by very definition these and little more. ![]() ![]() Red curtains, spotlights, blank verse, laughter, darkness, these are all confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all-purpose word. Yet when we talk about theatre this is not quite what we mean. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. I CAN take any empty space and call it a bare stage. ![]()
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