After over thousands of years of life, could theater be facing its death?
It’s easy to imagine. With cable television the norm and multimillion-dollar film blockbusters packed with special effects and high-powered movie stars dominating the box office, theater has had a lot of competition.
Nevertheless, the art form remains a force to be reckoned with, even after all this time.
Although it is not entirely certain when or where theater got its start, the oldest surviving written plays date back to ancient Greece.
Legend has it that both drama and comedy developed from performances dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility and wine.
The singing, dancing and storytelling presented for him eventually transformed into theater as it is known today: actors onstage before an audience, performing lines and utilizing props in order to tell a story.
“Theater was invented to be a means of communication, but now the way for artists to communicate with people is through film and television,” said Brian Kite, a visiting UCLA theater professor who is currently directing the on-campus “The Beggar’s Opera.”
“As artists working in theater, we need to ask, “˜What makes theater different?'”
Despite the convenient nature of television and the powerful composition of film, theater possesses a unique kind of allure.
“The uniqueness of theater has to do with the commonality of all of those people in the same room together in an experience that is not precisely repeatable,” said Rosemary Quinn, director of the Experimental Theatre Wing of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
“The same play will happen and hopefully the same lines will happen, but it is essentially something that happens only once. It’s a kind of recognition of hearts beating together in a room that there is less and less of in our culture.”
The number of hearts beating in a theater together determines, in many cases, how long a production will last; if enough tickets cannot be sold for a show, the show will probably not run for very long.
Filling enough seats for a stage play or musical on Broadway, however, is usually not a problem.
According to BBC.com, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” gave its 7,486th performance at the Majestic Theatre on Jan. 9, 2006, making it the longest-running Broadway musical ever ““ and it’s showing no signs of stopping.
“Phantom of the Opera’s” monetary earnings also beat out “Titanic,” the highest-grossing film of all time. While “Titanic” earned $1.8 billion, the musical has netted $3.2 billion to date.
Drew Ruesch, a first-year theater student and member of the UCLA student group HOOLIGAN ““ the Honorable Order of Licentious Instigators of the General Artist Network ““ knows that the demand for a play or musical has the power to make or break a production.
He points out that this dependency is sometimes problematic.
“Most people can’t afford to spend enough money to go see plays, but plays can’t survive unless they make enough money to support the show,” Ruesch said.
Financially, Broadway doesn’t have much to worry about.
Its shows usually have a surplus of funds available, which are provided by high-end, wealthy producers.
“A lot of corporations are coming together and becoming conglomerate producers,” said Meg Bussert, an instructor at NYU Steinhardt and Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Musical for her work in “Brigadoon.”
Funding is generally more of a challenge for people working off Broadway and in smaller theaters.
The UCLA Department of Theater is more concerned with training students through rehearsals than with producing plays.
The school does, however, require a large budget so the students have the opportunity to work on their craft.
The theater department is constantly looking for sponsors and donations, especially since their budget has been cut enormously within the past decade.
“Over the last five years or so, the theater department has lost about one-fourth of its funding from the state,” said Bill Ward, chair of the theater department. “When I became chair in 1998, we had a budget of about $4 million to put on our classes and hire faculty and everything else and now it’s about $1 million less than that.”
HOOLIGAN has also found funding to be quite a challenge. They have been trying to raise $30,000 to produce “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” the musical they hope to perform onstage this year.
So far, it has been impossible for them to find a sponsor, and since they are a student group, UCLA can only grant them a certain amount of money.
HOOLIGAN’s members have been working for the past two months to raise funds, but online surveys and TV tapings aren’t making the cut.
“The reason funding is so difficult is because putting on a production is extremely expensive,” Ruesch said. “(Attending) TV tapings at $14 per seat isn’t going to take us to our goal.”
The cost is understandable when each and every aspect of production is considered. Not only do costumes, props and lighting have to be paid for, but marketing and sometimes even licensing must be considered as well.
Once they do collect enough money, the HOOLIGANS will have to advertise their production in order to attract an audience.
This can be challenging for a group of students who are, as of now, lacking famous names.
However, celebrities from the world of film and television have been entering the theater scene lately and bringing the crowds with them.
“We’re living in a celebrity culture, so celebrities in plays definitely bring in audiences that otherwise wouldn’t be there,” said Robert George, a fourth-year theater student.
Broadway is equipped with a buffet of well-known celebrities to choose from for casting. Within the past couple years, Julia Roberts (“Three Days of Rain”), Christina Applegate (“Sweet Charity”) and Denzel Washington (“Julius Caesar”) have each starred in a Broadway production.
At the local level, the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood has also been casting film and television actors. Within the past year, it has featured well-known actors such as Jason Alexander, Carrie Fisher and Alicia Silverstone.
“I think film and television actors have a whole element of their craft that they feel like they are not playing with until they get onstage,” Quinn said.
Not only do the actors get something positive out of their theater experience, but theaters such as the Geffen benefit as well.
But unfortunately for longtime patrons, it has become much easier for theaters to charge more per ticket for performances in part because of the draw of movie and television stars.
“It’s outrageously expensive,” Bussert said. “What is happening on Broadway and probably other places as well is it’s becoming an elitist sort of entertainment. You have to have up to a couple hundred dollars to be able to go.”
Although the cost does in fact have the potential to exclude many from attending, theatergoers seem to have a burning love for theater that enables them to look past the high-priced tickets.
Makena Catlett, a third-year business student at Cal State Fullerton, is overwhelmed with debt from student loans but still managed to come up with $65 for a ticket to see “Speed-the-Plow” at the Geffen.
“Some things are just worth it even though I don’t have a lot of extra money lying around,” Catlett said. “For me, theater will always be worth the price of the ticket.”
Theater’s wide appeal and longevity are clear indications that the art form is here to stay.
“Theater is a forum for ideas and for direct contact and community between the actor and the audience,” said Gil Cates, founding dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
“Occasionally there will be more people coming to it, and sometimes there will be less, but I think that theater will be with us until the end of time.”