Changing Stages: 100 Years of Theater

"Half of life trickles away in front of screens [local cineplex, TV, Internet]," says host and renowned theater director Richard Eyre, which naturally leads to a key question regarding the performing arts: is there any future for theater? In The Future of Theater: But Is It Art?, the final program in the six-part series Changing Stages: 100 Years of Theater, Eyre argues (convincingly, I think) that the "live" aspect of theatre will always be its trump card when pitted against the shadow plays we watch in our modern-electronics-heavy caves. Still, recognizing that the narrative vocabulary of contemporary audiences has greatly evolved, Eyre looks at some of the ways late 20th century theater has adapted, focusing on the flowering of musical theater (Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and featuring interviews with Nicholas Hynter, Trevor Nunn, Hal Prince, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Julie Taymor) and the addition of multimedia to the original formula of actor(s) + text (particularly in the works of Robert Lepage). Even so, Eyre also finds life still kicking in traditional theater, where the recreated Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, headed up by artistic director/actor Mark Rylance (Intimacy), consistently draws sold-out crowds. Regardless of the direction(s) theatre takes, Eyre cautions us, in order to survive it must remain intense, relevant and affordable. A fine overview of the nature of theater at the end of the millennium, this is recommended. The other titles in the series are: Shakespeare: Drama's DNA, Irish Theater: Raw Bones and Poetry, America: Broadway and Dramatic Realism, Looking Back: British Theater--Two Wars Later and Between Beckett and Brecht: Looking In, Looking Out. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)