WEEK 7

This week, I became interested in the idea of what theatre is now, the posted link on Minerva talked about, how theatre is no longer theatre, and instead it is something which we are all familiar with. The example given, was how in the west end musicals sell out a year before. It is because of other forms of media! The first example is that of The Lion King, does it sell out because people want to see a musical, a show or is it because, People know the well know version created from Disney and want to see a spin of from that? It is hard to determine weather; this can be classed as a form of theatre! If Disney had not made the film, it would not be familiar, so would it be as popular, a lot of what the theatre put on is down to the new Media.

The second example is that of reality television! Sound of Music and Joseph and his Technicolor Dream coat are now box office hits in the west end. Two of the most popular shows, however, I think this is greatly to do with the fact that the starring roles came about from the BBC shows, How to solve a problem like Maria and Any Joseph will do! Millions voted for the favorite Maria and Joseph weekly, the winners winning the leading role, but if these two people were not televised, I doubt that these shows would attract such high number. From reading both articles on Minerva, I believe that the future of theatre does lie in other forms of media.

Zarrilli et al, comments that key developments in theatre happen as key developments in human nature do. This is something which I concur with, this day and age human nature is engaged with the celebrity world, and so theatres have adapted this theory. Theatres are now using top celebrities to draw in the numbers! Sir Ian Mckellin played King Lear in Courtyard Theatre Stratford upon Avon in spring 2007 and the show was a sell out. This shows how theatre adapts to the human demands; they want famous celebrities they get them!!

As part of the group work, I began to investigate further into racism as a form of entertainment, it became apparent to me that violence was also huge, so we began toiling with the idea of having violence as the over all theme, as this could include racism, happy slapping bullying and much more. Giving us more content to work with.