We all live theatrical lives. While we can act at the pace of a stage play, our inner lives move a lot more like what we see in a film. In theater there is so much left to the player as well as to the audience’s imagination, to be filled in through the prism of the individual life-view. So a stage play is so many different plays to so many people. Well so is a film a unique personal experience to each viewer, a different experience with each viewing. The difference between the two mediums being, in cinema there is a lot more movement through time and space thanks to ever evolving techniques that are bringing cinematic representation closer to our own inner mental processes and even transcending them.
So often a movie has gone many steps ahead and it forces you to pause and derive the story from the melange of images and sounds that whizz frenetically back and forth in time and space, much as our thoughts do. There is no focal area like a stage for a play – a limited physical area in 3D where all illusions are conjured by the imagination(of course there are sophisticated multi media effects increasingly in use and they get smarter by the minute).
But think of a pure, stark play enacted on bare boards, the script and actors alone driving it! A process that seems in reverse to what happens onscreen – a virtual reality from which one often has to recover ones coordinates in real-time-and space. It is the unreality of cinema that has turned it into the kind of escape that theater has never really become. All save fantasy plays that allow your mind to be someplace else for those brief couple of hours in which eyes, ears and other senses are glued to that limited cuboid of space and its superset the auditorium, into which the sounds expand themselves. Releasing the imagination to run as wild as it will.
Footnote: This was not a random post. It was a spin-off from two simultaneous inputs. The first is the Movie Marathon I have been treating myself to over the past month. Perhaps in a bid to find the lost links to my earlier unfinished writings. And the second is the sense of awakening that I can continue from where I left off. That my imagination is ready once more for its wild and joyful release!
August 16th 2014
I dedicate this today to the memory of the late Robin Williams
Well said, Maya.
ReplyDeleteThis is a stage where all of us are playing our roles in this life, which could either be based on the actions of our previous life or just the deeds we performed yesterday!
Robin Williams was a fine actor and it is a tragedy that he had to go like this. I pray that he gets to live such a life again where he could touch many souls!
Thank you Ruchira.
DeleteThe comment below where I quote Kim is so revealing about our interconnections. Do read it.
Crossroads or an entire matrix of roads connecting all our journeys so we can continue where others leave off
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ReplyDeleteFrom Kim Raikes:
"I've always wondered if there was already, at birth, some kind of map written within us--a map of our journeys to come, our developments to come, our relationships to come. And if that map is interrupted by say, a wrong turn on the road or an untimely end to our travels, what happens then? Since our journey is never traveled alone, do others complete the road that's been begun by us? Is that the task given to us with the passing away of each of our loved ones or heroes?... I was born on a Thursday and, as "Thursday's child," have "far to go"...but I may not make it alone. We all need each other to complete the road!"
Kim I have taken the liberty to post this comment you made on my FB wall. It is so apt here.
DeleteWell I just remembered something I read a while back in Carl Jung's autobiography (Memories, Dreams, Reflections). He spoke of his discovery, at the age of 5 or 6, of the non-stop cinema going on inside him. Since I made the same discovery at about the same age, I could understand the way in which his never-ending drama of fantasies and images empowered his outer life with mystery and meaning. Maybe this is what drives people into becoming actors, writers, poets? That inner world cries out for a stage in the outer world we call "reality"...
ReplyDeleteThis is such a perfect summation of what has always gone on within me. That magical juncture presents us with the stage and we find ourselves on it
DeleteKim you forgot our beloved painters and visual communicators :)
DeleteI am so glad the movie marathon ignited a blazing trail deep within you. Cannot wait to see the treasures you unearth. And as usual I'm blown away by Kim's comment :)
ReplyDeleteYou have expressed this in a revealing way! Indeed something blazes deep within.
DeleteI am reminded of my post on Chakratirtha Travels
Mine the Darkness
My city seems to have dropped off the theater map in the past 2 decades. I remember some of the plays I saw in my childhood and youth. They have a lot less 'jazz' than movies, but they are a lot more intense. To be held spell-bound by a story being enacted in live, is the most life giving experience of all. My brains teems with unruly thoughts running helter-skelter... :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome to this space and thank you so much for reminding me of the intensity of theater in days gone by. Today's offerings (whether theatrical, cinematic, literary, artistic or musical) are all about packaging, regardless of content. Meaningful content elegantly packaged is all we need, not the clutter of bells and whistles that leave you searching for a needle in a haystack(if at all it is present). I love the stark minimalism that enables a swift connection of hearts and minds.
DeleteYour unruly thoughts running helter-skelter are what shape themselves like mountain springs and waterfalls, into steady rivers that play host to civilizations growing on their banks while being channels of communication with other cultures and realms. Heartfelt thanks to each of you commenting here. Each comment is a fresh input, a strand of inspiration, a catalyst!
The theatre company i work in and the play they are working on currently uses only the actor with few essential properties. the play is called 'Bali' and it's a beautiful play that delves into various perspectives of violence.
ReplyDeleteSome day i will share a video of it.
This is exciting! The stark minimalism is appropriate to the theme and it opens a vaster uncharted domain to the viewer's imagination.
DeleteGood to have you on this space. You add a lot of value.
Dear Nipun - I want to see the video
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