Went to BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music) Cinématheque last night to see "In the company of actors," a sweet little docco by Ian Darling about the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Hedda Gabler," which was invited to BAM in 2006 and became one of the hits of the theatrical season. I wasn't able to get a ticket then - Cate Blanchett, who played Hedda, was apparently sensational - but this film was almost as good. Welllll, different but also very satisfying. The documentary charts the time from the company's reconvening in Sydney, 18 months after ending a long run, to revive and update the production until opening night in Brooklyn six weeks later. We're in rehearsal, which non-theater people almost never get to see! It's fascinating to watch the actors reinhabit their interpretations and move beyond them, as well as to see all the work involved in moving a production - different size theater, different shaped stage, etc., not to mention a very different audience. And it evoked for me very strongly the magical communitas of the stage of which I was getting vicarious glimpses last semester. It beautifully illustrated that and why theater is always of this moment, this company, this place, and so, as Blanchett at one point says, differs from literature: "theater doesn't have a static notion of truth." That the film also took a company I'd just seen in Melbourne to the very institution in which I was then sitting in Brooklyn added to the sense of joyous synchronicity!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Theatre lives!
Went to BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music) Cinématheque last night to see "In the company of actors," a sweet little docco by Ian Darling about the Sydney Theatre Company's production of "Hedda Gabler," which was invited to BAM in 2006 and became one of the hits of the theatrical season. I wasn't able to get a ticket then - Cate Blanchett, who played Hedda, was apparently sensational - but this film was almost as good. Welllll, different but also very satisfying. The documentary charts the time from the company's reconvening in Sydney, 18 months after ending a long run, to revive and update the production until opening night in Brooklyn six weeks later. We're in rehearsal, which non-theater people almost never get to see! It's fascinating to watch the actors reinhabit their interpretations and move beyond them, as well as to see all the work involved in moving a production - different size theater, different shaped stage, etc., not to mention a very different audience. And it evoked for me very strongly the magical communitas of the stage of which I was getting vicarious glimpses last semester. It beautifully illustrated that and why theater is always of this moment, this company, this place, and so, as Blanchett at one point says, differs from literature: "theater doesn't have a static notion of truth." That the film also took a company I'd just seen in Melbourne to the very institution in which I was then sitting in Brooklyn added to the sense of joyous synchronicity!
