Chapter Two - theatrestudent

Chapter Two

Stage Versus Screen

Audience: No Cell Phones, Please! Theatre are active participants  Communication flows both ways  a pure form of acting because it belongs to the actors and audience

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

 Audiences

Audience: No Cell Phones, Please! Film and TV

Peter Cade/Stone/Getty Images

 Audiences

are

passive  Communication flows in only one direction  Usually know in advance what you are getting for your time and money

Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up Acting in Film

Photofest

 Photographic

charisma is important  Often shot out of sequence  Memorization is not as important  Allowed to fail

Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up “We’re tightrope walkers. When you walk the wire in a movie, the wire is painted on the floor, but when you walk it on the stage, it’s a hundred feet high without a net.” Al Pacino, Actor “…acting for film is like a musician playing in a recording studio and acting in the theatre is like playing live in concert…” Willem Dafoe, Actor

Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up Acting on the Stage and training are essential  Everything is a wide-shot  Memorization skills are required  Must perform well with each performance

T. Charles Erickson/Courtesy Berkeley Repertory Theatre

 Talent

Directing: Direct and Indirect Theatre is a playwright’s medium  Director understands that when the performance begins, the actors are in charge  The director tends to work collaboratively

© Joan Marcus

 It

Directing: Direct and Indirect Film

Photofest

 It

is a director’s medium  Exerts absolute control over every shot  The director tends to be solitary authority

Funding: Follow the Money Funding for the Screen Comes from  Ticket sales  DVD rentals  Advertising

Everett Collection

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Funding for Theatre comes from  Ticket and concession sales  Federal, state and local government grants  Corporate funding and private donations

William Missouri Downs

Funding: Follow the Money

Control: Who Pulls the Strings? 

Screen entertainment tends to put the values of the audience foremost

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Theatre tends to value the voice of the artist

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Bourgeois theatre and independent filmmaking will often combine both considerations

The Theatre Next Door Who controls content? • Screen entertainment policies are dominated by a small handful of executives. • Hundreds of differing political view are promoted by thousands of theatres across the US.

National Archives

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Ownership: Copyrights and Cash 

Copyright – a legal guarantee granted by the government to creative artists that allows them to maintain control and profit from their work

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Royalty payment – fee paid to playwrights for the rights to produce their play

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Public domain – once a playwright has been dead for 70 years, his or her plays become pubic property

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Writers for hire – writers in screen entertainment who forfeit their rights to the works they author for a film or television program

Curtain Call 

Screen entertainment tends to view their audiences as consumers and what they do as a product

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Theatre tends to view their audiences as equal participants in the theatre experience and what they do as artistic production