ENGLISH THEATRE OF 19th AND 20th CENTURIES GROUP A
SURNAME: Giarratana NAME: Melania
THEATRE OF THE FUTURE OR FUTURE OF THE THEATRE?
In this little essay, I am supposed to express my point of view on the future
of the theatre; in order to do that, I will base my analysis on the shabby
knowledge I have got of the theatre in general.
Throughout this course, I have been reading and watching the plays of
the most famous play writers of the last century, such as Beckett, Shaw and
Pinter. Each of them has his own peculiarities but I have noticed that they
have a common denominator, which is, the “denounce”: the themes of
the main part of their plays are the problems of Humanity such as war, women pride,
poverty, intrapersonal relationships and so on.
In this sense, I can define, by my point of view, the contemporary
theatre as “social”. After the reading of such masterpieces as
these plays are, I regret that I have not done it before and that nowadays, to
go to the theatre is too expensive.
The age we are living in is that one of the Mass Media, the age of the
Internet and the new technologies, of the commercial movies and the Play
Station, the age in which it could be difficult to find a place for such an old
entertainment as the theatre.
Nowadays the term theatre is used to define also those commercial
performances called “Musicals” which follow the business rules and
not the artistic ones, admitting the idea of rules in the artistic world. For
this reason, it would be useful to ask ourselves if we can talk about a new
theatre of the future or if a future is still possible for the theatre.
In my opinion, the existence of a theatre that is capable of reaching
the mass, even keeping a certain cultural thickness, is impossible. People like
to be entertained and prefer not to think very much watching a movie or a play
on the stage, so the Musicals get the mass and let the actors and the producers
make money, but they cannot be compared to a masterpiece like “Waiting
for Godot” of Samuel Beckett. Furthermore, the
new generations are not educated in order to appreciate the theatre because
television is easier to be used being it at home and cheaper than the theatre.
Years ago, one of the impossible dreams of the young actors was Broadway, now
the dreamland is Hollywood,
because the money is the only rule admitted in the contemporary artistic world.
Even if there are many cultural associations that try to improve the
situation of the theatre, most of the time, they are no able to pursue their
projects because they miss the money to do that.
The purpose of the play writers we have studied was to voice their
inspiration and their opinions about many important issues, nowadays the
purpose is the money and if it does not change, we will not have theatre
anymore. Somebody will use the term to refer to other kinds of entertainment,
which are quite different from the theatre that makes your heart
beat, that makes you get angry, depressed, happy and above all, the
theatre that stimulates your mind.
Auto-evaluation: Notable
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
López
© Melania Giarratana
megia@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia
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