Are Broadway Shows the Lowest Form of Performance Art?

[kid charlemagne]

ive been attending them the past months with my mom because she always asks me to go and i dont say no.... i have really come to be repulsed by them....the act of playwriting is too aware of its audience and constantly plays to them for laughter, there is hardly ever any room for pausing or for silence the way there is in films, the only pauses are done to give audience time to laugh.... since the play is on a stage, that doesnt move or change decoration at all, it becomes a confined space for the set amount of actors have their place, and thus the writers feel confined in dialogue to divy the lines between the actors, leading to maddening snippy sorkin dialgoue of lines rapidly bouncing from one actor to another leaving no room for silence..... the actors are maybe the most infuriating bit of all this as theater actors in general ive noticed seem to believe that since theyre on stage, in front of a live audience, theyre required to do the MOST acting, there is never any subtlety in performance, it is a constant one note performance from everyone who is playing a one note caricature.... there is also an inherent anti intimacy that i get from theater and plays, the camera is the most intimate object in the world, so films naturally use this as the greatest strength, but in plays when you are only viewing the experience from one angle, so there is nothing emotionally charging oppurutnity.....i hate this shit i have to stop agreeing to go to them

i of course never say this to my mom, when she asks if i liked the plays, i just say "its nice"

In my question i am specifying "broadway shows" but there are plenty of other theater performances out there that exist and that are playing, but are they good? are they different? do they offer any artistic merit that films and music do not? are plays and theater better read as text and not seen? I have read shakespeare and seen those texts done on stage and on screen and the text always beats the stage performance and the films always beat the stage performances, so why should i respect theater and plays in any form?

 

[luka]

Do they make you want to kill?

 

[shakahislop]

i've never been to one but i assume that i'd hate them coz they're musicals and they almost make me feel sick. repulsion is the right word all of that scratches against a particular sensitive spot. a gag reflex. where do you think all of that comes from kid charlemagne. i think for me there's something childish about broadway shows.

 

[kid charlemagne]

Do they make you want to kill?

Muttering monologues I see lead fly,
Hylic faces and false senses erupt,
Barks of laughter,
Turn to shrieks of blood.
Your cherry's been popped Mr President,
But not your customary phallic entrance,
Just a sensual climax like no other.
Contemporary crowds of tombstones.
Death on a leash,
Life in a noose,
The pendulum swings with just a push.

 

[kid charlemagne]

i've never been to one but i assume that i'd hate them coz they're musicals and they almost make me feel sick. repulsion is the right word all of that scratches against a particular sensitive spot. a gag reflex. where do you think all of that comes from kid charlemagne. i think for me there's something childish about broadway shows.

I think the crowd and how much they go crazy over the least funny things really gets me, many moments where my mom laughs and looks over at my blank face.

 

[Corpsey]

Surely performance art is the lowest form of performance art?

 

[Murphy]

 

[Corpsey]

I haven't been all that many plays over the years but I've enjoyed some of them that I've seen. The most recent I've seen was 'Amadeus' at the National Theatre.

Overacting is I suppose a function of having to project to the punters at the back.

There's something magical (or there can be) about watching a play, the way it's lit and staged, the sense of a collective live experience that you don't get with films. It has a charm to it, the collective willingness to suspend disbelief and be taken in, taken on a ride. And of course a playwright like Shakespeare exploits that believing-but-not-believing thing in plays like Hamlet and The Tempest by nodding to the theatrical nature of it all (and of all experience, the world's a stage, etc.)

I think reading Shakespeare can be better, of course they always do things differently to how you imagine it, and often not to your taste, and the language (which is difficult) flies by in the theatre so that you'll miss all sorts of subtleties, but I also think just reading Shakespeare it takes a conscious effort to imagine it as theatre, as drama, because there isn't much in the way of e.g. stage directions and emphases.

Actors are annoying, of course, and the smugness of the crowds laughing at unfunny jokes yes I recognise all that. But I wouldn't write it off.

 

[Corpsey]

One of the reasons I avoid the theatre is that I find it quite a tense experience, nervous on behalf of the actors, but I suppose that tension is what makes it exciting, can make it more visceral an experience than a film.

Obviously I prefer films, though, I'm not a monster

 

[kid charlemagne]

theres too much of a fake intimacy with theatre..... i just try the opera instead

 

[Murphy]

Once you get dragged to Annie twice, by sisters and then school, the logical conclusion from said trauma is that all musicals of this nature should be banned for 100,000 years

 

[Murphy]

no-one’s saying shoot up broadway kid

 

[kid charlemagne]

maybe i should see annie.... it will change my mind

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I sympathise. I think pro theatre has become very stylised, probably for the same reason music subgenres often do, which is because they start trying to impress other artists rather than the general public. Am Dram has a much higher hit rate for me than pro performances, especially for Shakespeare.