While we spoke via phone when she was still in Argentina, my wife Fernanda told me about the play that she had just seen there. When she returned, she told me more about it, adding that it was only a small, neighborhood production, but had been very good. She added that she wished that there were more like it here in San Francisco.
Although she knows that I really don't care for theater, she relayed her feelings to me in a way that a person does when they have regrets about a thing. At least that's how it sounded to me. And while I am fully aware that I probably read that aspect into it, it still saddened me. I imagined too that she may also feel remorseful that she married someone that doesn't generally like plays as she does.
These thoughts set me off me asking myself, yet again, why it is that I don't enjoy theater, but am liable to be moved by certain films, It seems to me to logically follow that if a person likes one, then shouldn't they also enjoy the other?
In terms of how these two forms appear, how they present, there is something about the lack of border, really an end, that the finite space of a film frame is able to create and define in a clear way that theater does not. The play, whether on a stage or not, is for me too enacted, but not restrictive or discerned enough in a way that makes sense to me as the artifice that I see it as.
While I often find in-between spaces, such as the difficult physical location that I see plays existing in, to offer a stretch of freedom for me as a viewer, the theatrical place instead leads me to feeling confined, and sometimes, even short of breath. I find that feeling often occurring in art museums, too.
Perhaps because of this problematic area, the actions of the players in the productions often seem laughable to me. I actually am embarrassed at times for the actresses and actors, as they seem to be trying too hard to convince me of something (though I don't know what). It just looks ridiculous to me.
In contrast, I rarely question the form of film, even when I don't like what I am seeing, because the artifice is pronounced in a way that I can enjoy without continually questioning it. The same is true for me of television. It seems that neither medium attempts to be anything besides artificial, and this approach is for me both refreshing and easy to consume.
Of course, I have considered the idea that I have become more naturalized to the television (whose screen, though smaller, is not terribly unlike a movie theater screen), but I don't think that it is the resounding influence.
Instead, it is more likely the rigidity of the screen's borders that allows me to float more freely as a consumer within the tale it depicts. The subsequent lightness allows me to interpret more freely, feeling less constrained and determined. And for me, to feel even a little less weighed down, is so wonderful.
These thoughts set me off me asking myself, yet again, why it is that I don't enjoy theater, but am liable to be moved by certain films, It seems to me to logically follow that if a person likes one, then shouldn't they also enjoy the other?
In terms of how these two forms appear, how they present, there is something about the lack of border, really an end, that the finite space of a film frame is able to create and define in a clear way that theater does not. The play, whether on a stage or not, is for me too enacted, but not restrictive or discerned enough in a way that makes sense to me as the artifice that I see it as.
While I often find in-between spaces, such as the difficult physical location that I see plays existing in, to offer a stretch of freedom for me as a viewer, the theatrical place instead leads me to feeling confined, and sometimes, even short of breath. I find that feeling often occurring in art museums, too.
Perhaps because of this problematic area, the actions of the players in the productions often seem laughable to me. I actually am embarrassed at times for the actresses and actors, as they seem to be trying too hard to convince me of something (though I don't know what). It just looks ridiculous to me.
In contrast, I rarely question the form of film, even when I don't like what I am seeing, because the artifice is pronounced in a way that I can enjoy without continually questioning it. The same is true for me of television. It seems that neither medium attempts to be anything besides artificial, and this approach is for me both refreshing and easy to consume.
Of course, I have considered the idea that I have become more naturalized to the television (whose screen, though smaller, is not terribly unlike a movie theater screen), but I don't think that it is the resounding influence.
Instead, it is more likely the rigidity of the screen's borders that allows me to float more freely as a consumer within the tale it depicts. The subsequent lightness allows me to interpret more freely, feeling less constrained and determined. And for me, to feel even a little less weighed down, is so wonderful.
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