Upstaged (PDF)

How can theatre thrive in a culture dominated by film and television? Interviews with stage actors, playwrights, theatre directors and others, including Julie Taymor, Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, Peter Hall, Wallace Shawn, Frank Rich, Simon Callow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, David Leveaux, Adrian Lester, Nicholas Hytner, Paul Scofield and Robert Brustein. Ever since the introduction of the talkies in the '20s and television in the '50s, live theatre has struggled for its place in a culture increasingly dominated by the screen. How does that dominance affect individual theatre artists and theatrical movements? How does it change what audiences seek from the theatre? What, in the end, is the role of live theatre in our media-saturated culture? Anne Nicholson Weber has sought answers from an extraordinary cast of leading actors, playwrights, directors, producers, critics, agents and marketers. In conversations that range from close-ups to cultural imperialism, microphones to myth-making, sit-coms to Shakespeare and vocal technique to voyeurism, these thoughtful observers illuminate the struggle of making a living versus making art; the modern audience's preference for images over words and for technology over the human body; and the imperative that theatre play to its essential strengths of language, metaphor, immediacy and community. Those who love theatre will find wisdom and support in this fascinating book.