Trying to Capture a Live Experience

When I was in undergrad, I was part of a Gilbert and Sullivan society, because I am super cool.

 In this scene from Iolanthe, the Lord Chancellor has just discovered that his fairy wife does not have to be banished from the land of all the fairies due to a legal loophole. Viz. this author, far right, looking super pleased that she can now marry the Peer of the House of Lords of her choice because he has magically been turned into a fairy himself for reasons of PLOT and EMPIRE.

Image: CanalSavoir, http://www.canalsavoir.tv/emission/iolanthe



Our plays were put on every year over a two week run,  and, like all live theater, they were completely different each night. That's the beauty of theater; it is never the same show. Live theater is dependent on the audience, the mood and surrounding life story of each actor, current events, acoustics, and visual perspective. It is truly impossible to recreate theater as it was experienced because you cannot replicate all of these features. This is a reason, why, for example, Broadway revivals that do not take risks are often unsuccessful. The 2006 revival of Les Misérables was considered sluggish and slow, in part because it came too closely after a previous revival--it lacks the excitement and je ne sais quoi of the original, without creating any unique stage magic of its own.

The question of what happens with a play when it is recorded (digitally or otherwise) contends with many similar issues. With this particular play, we were recorded and somehow a Québec television company got a hold of the recording and started broadcasting it on late night public access television. Suddenly, people at work would come up to me and knowingly leer, "I saw you on late night TV last night...nice dancing!" (n.b. I am very dancing-challenged) I knew I had to go check it out myself, and was properly horrified by the fact that the sound balance was off, the colours were shaky (you can see in the picture above that the document being held at the center has odd stripes of yellow running through it) and in general it felt flat and lifeless.

Now, it is entirely possible that we presented a bad play. I have had people tell me it was very good, but these people are also close friends. I am of the opinion, however, that the problem is simply that there is no way to accurately record the feeling of a live performance in a digital medium. There may never be a way to record that feeling--to use another Beatles example, as exciting as it is to be able to have a live recording of the "Twist and Shout" performance where John Lennon tells the Queen to rattle her jewelry, we can't experience the feeling of seeing something so irreverent in person. We are desensitized by repetition and by the one-dimensionality of remediation.

The frustrating thing about this is that this digital copy of the play is the one that will be preserved, go into the university archives, and then be the only record that we performed it at all. Because it is ripped from its context, we don't get the full picture. Its transmission is limited, in my opinion.

In no way am I suggesting that the only successful digital texts are those that are "born digital". However, I would caution people attempting to create a digital adaptation of something out of context. You cannot simply record a live theatrical performance and then expect it to stand for itself: some form of renegotiation with the new digital medium is necessary to make it seem fresh and new, as it stood at its first performance in the theater.