The Death of Theatre

By Joanne Simpson (20, Headliners)
“Ban all cinemas around the world.”


The movie industry grosses around $7billion a year in cinema ticket sales alone, with many people visiting the cinema as often as once a week and with modern movie-going trends veering towards the surreal and fantasy genre. Can more classic past times like going to the theatre, or even reading a book really compete?

With the Cathedral Quarter arts festival been and gone, it becomes apparent that the theatre has lost at least one generation of young people. Surprisingly few young people have heard of the festival, let alone actually taken the time to attend a play! It is much easier and inevitably cheaper to simply “wait for the movie.” Many of my friends would love to attend the theatre more often, but find this increasingly hard as wages from a part time job, no matter how well paying, will not extend to a night out at the theatre.

The marked decline in Theatregoers is probably most painfully apparent in the loss of one of our national theatres a few years ago, and in the shabby, almost decrepit state of our other national theatre. A couple months ago during a rendition of “Macbeth” the roof proceeded to leak rather spectacularly causing the actors to perform an obscure little side step to avoid the ever-growing patches of water on the stage floor.

It is however true that slowly and somewhat painfully the theatre is beginning to cater for younger tastes, it began with crude attempts to modernise Shakespeare, and has progressed to the more enlightened plays like “Falaraki,” Phillip Pullmans “Dark Materials” and even “Blood Brothers.” Which although getting on a bit now, is still a hilarious and witty play no matter how many times you see it.

It is nevertheless an unfortunate by-product of this modernisation that cinemas are plagued with the film industries attempt to gain ever more ticket sales by modernising and subsequently murdering Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Bass Lurmans version of “Romeo and Juliet” was particularly painful, due to poor casting, poor acting, poor cinematography, poor visual effects, poor interpretation of the text…As a complete novice in all things Shakespearean, I still couldn’t bring myself to watch it all in one sitting. It was utterly different to the play and people who hadn’t read a single Shakespearean play in their lives, or seen one in the theatre were suddenly experts on Mercutios motivation in act 1 scene 3.

The BBC’s “Big Read” poll was full of this movie-book bias; it became blatantly obvious from the outset that people’s opinions of the books were based entirely on the film version rather than the written word. For example “The Lord of the Rings;” it was an amazing book but it was an outstanding piece of cinematography, consequently it won. It is interesting to note that almost every book that was in the top 21 had a movie based on it at one point or another, a movie which is now considered a “classic” in its’ own right.

Even schools are now picking books that have a suitable film counterpart. No English class would be complete without the inevitable introduction of some BBC version of the book, performed by an unknown cast and often so radically reworked and interpreted that is barely recognisable as the original piece of literature it was meant to be. Probably the most obvious example of this that I have seen has been the 1960's version of Pride and Prejudice, starring Grear Garson and Lawrence Olivier all Austin’s savage criticism had been removed from it leaving only a simpering love story behind.

It would appear that film industry is dominating the entertainment market, and this trend is not set to change, unless of course there is a world wide ban on cinema. Theatregoers must simply resign themselves to sidelines until the time comes when there is a radical change in modern theatre here or at least until someone writes a stage version of Lord of the Rings!