Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Theatre - a picnic?

You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kinds of musicals over and over again - all spectacles. You get your tickets for the Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what theatre is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theatre at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture...I don't think the theatre will die per se, but it's never going to be what it was. You can't bring it back. It's gone. It's a tourist attraction.

Stephen Sondheim

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