Why do I find movies so engaging and plays so boring?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t know what it is. I go see a movie and I get lost in it. I forget I’m sitting in a theater and I feel like I’m part of the movie. Even if it’s a bad movie.

But when I see a play performed in a theater, I never even get close to that state. All I see are people “acting” on a stage pretending to be their characters. I’m always thinking about how much time until the play is over. Often I will be bored to the point of being sleepy.

A perfect example of this is the Nutcracker ballet. When I see it performed on a stage, I practically fall asleep. But when I see it on TV, I’m mesmerized by the ability and elegance of the dancers.

So what’s the deal? I know there are some people out there who love seeing performers on a stage. Why don’t I love it?

2

Well, actually its not the goal of all theater to be immersive. In fact, followers of Berthold Brecht attempt to constantly remind the audience that they are in a theater.

So perhaps it has to do with the plays you’ve gone to see.

Have you ever been to a really big “spectacle” type play, along the lines of Les Miserable? have you ever been to a play that has a “thrust” style stage, which puts the actors more in the center of the action? Have you ever had good seats?

3

First time I saw the Nutcracker on stage, I was surprised and a little “disappointed” to hear the thud of dancers’ feet hitting the stage. On TV, they always seem to float above, never quite touching the ground.

Anyway, it could be because live theater moves a bit slower than movies, which are just getting more and more frantic with the editing. Also, in movie theaters, it is often completely dark whereas in a live theater (at least the few that I’ve been into) it’s bright enough that you can see the audience and that makes you more aware of your surroundings.

4

This is something that’s been bothering me too. A lot of friends all say what a wonderful experience it is to see a play. Well my problem with stage theatre is that it’s so theatrical. That’s probably my problem. I hate it when actors overplay in movies, and on stage, they do it so much more

5

filmore, do you read a lot of books or do you prefer watching television? Readers will more often not mind the pacing of a play. The television generation and its accompanying fruit fly level attention span will most likely have a difficult time with live acted plays. You may wish to read the story (or play) ahead of time in order to have a grasp of sequencing in the plot. This might enhance your understanding of the script.

The Gaspode, stage players often overemote while performing their roles. This is a byproduct of the stage’s open air history. Not all of the audience could necessarily hear the spoken lines of the actors when performing out of doors. Similar to silent film (over) acting, players tend to magnify body gestures and facial expressions in order to convey any meaning that might be lost if their words go unheard. This is now known as ‘hamming it up’ or ‘chewing up the scenery.’

6

I do understand that the point of theatre is to be theatrical, at least in a limited way. I can read Shakespeare and enjoy it a lot. Filmed versions of Shakespeare are (mostly) fun, with Baz Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet coming the closest on screen to capture old Will’s intentions.
Actually, I prefer most filmed versions of stage plays.
And I try to read 50 new books a year.

7

There’s another element to this that nobody has yet mentioned: Plays tend to be verbal (emphasis on the language) while movies tend to be visual (they tell their story in pictures; you can understand them, more or less, with the sound turned off).

The visual sense is certainly more, um, primitive, in the sense that it’s one of the first to develop (shortly after touch, and along with a broadly undifferentiated sense of hearing). Don’t misinterpret that to mean the person who prefers movies to plays is less culturally or intellectually developed, however. It’s just that looking at something, I think, keys more into a deeper, less rational part of the brain, and is easier to get carried away with.

At a play, by contrast, you have to listen and interpret. Sure, the big Broadway spectacles like The Lion King and Miss Saigon and the like give you the occasional amazing thing to look at, but the limitations of the proscenium make it difficult to focus the audience’s eye the way film can with a closeup or a moving camera or whatever. In consequence, in theater, no matter how spectacular, important information about the story and characters almost always must be delivered in the form of language; you can’t tell what’s going on just by looking. And since language is handled in a different part of the brain and in a very different way from vision, it is, of necessity, experientially different.

As a means of testing this, try looking at a foreign film without subtitles. (You can probably find one at a specialty video shop.) Unless you’re looking at, say, an Italian cousin of My Dinner with Andre, you will find you can follow the story in its broad strokes even though you don’t know what’s being said. Then try going to a play whose language you don’t speak (check the listings of one of your city’s international-district newspapers). Odds are, you’ll be completely and hopelessly lost almost immediately.

I’m fairly confident that’s what’s going on for the OP, because the way it’s explained is a giveaway:

It’s not about seeing; it’s about listening. Very different experience.

The mention of ballet (or other dance forms) is something of a departure from this, though, and that I chalk up to familiarity. I was bored by ballet until I actually took a class and got a very basic grounding in the vocabulary. Now I know at least a tiny amount about what I’m looking at, so it’s easier to watch. Same would go for any dance form, really.

Corollary question on visual vs. verbal: Do you like to read?

8

You’re uncultured swine?

(Kidding, kidding! :D)

9

Great post, Cervaise.

10

Cervaise – I agree that theatre is about listening, but it is also about connecting (BTW I think you’ve hit the nail on the head for the OP).

One of the things I experience in live theatre are the raw emotions – pure, raw, immediate. I’ve been riveted by intense emotions. In live theatre, everything is bare and in your face in a way that film isn’t. I think it is important to bear in mind that (and this is a generalization) for movies the emphasis is on situation, while in plays the emphasis is on character. I’ve been stunned by a production with no set to speak of, only lights and actors and a few props. Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight” and live performance by Marcel Marceau can literally blow you away. But this is the art practiced at it’s highest level. This isn’t Uncle Mike in the Ridgeway Community Theatre Production of “Sound of Music” – this is a group of dedicated artists at work. I’ve never been a big proponent of “name actors are that way because they really are the best at what they do,” but there is some validity to that statement (but again, it is a generality). Just like a lazy athlete, a lazy actor is no fun to watch.

And just to throw my 2 coins in on Ballet – I find it horribly dated and artificial: I found it difficult not to laugh during a production of Billy the Kid – which I actually really wanted to see – because of the artificial nature of the production vs. the reality I’ve been fed about the west. On the other hand, I find modern and Jazz – which are also artificial – much more dynamic and entertaining.

I think in summation – and I apologize for my rambling, I woke up some 15 minutes ago and the tea hasn’t kicked in yet:

You go to Movies for something different than what Theatre offers. They are different flavors of the same pastery. If you want a Crueller, you don’t buy a long john and if you want a long john, you don’t buy a jelly doughnut. They are similar, but not the same in flavor or experience.

11

You have the attention span of a 6 year old.

12

Count me squarely in the camp of the cineastes. To suggest any crude dichotomy between theater and film along the lines of intellectual/unintellectual is, IMHO, total B.S. – and there’s a vast and growing body of work, both in the form of notable films and books on film theory, that puts that old cliche to rest.

Nor do I entirely accept the notion that theater is verbal (basically a thinly coded allusion to “intellectual,” I suspect) as opposed to cinema’s being visual. Clearly, both mediums embrace both of those aspects. I do think that theater’s strengths skew towards the verbal, but that’s another way of saying that its capacity for visual expressiveness and innovation are limited (which they are).

[It is telling, though, that much of the vitality of Broadway over the past quarter-century has been due to the popularity of revivals, musical revivals, and new musicals of a pointedly “spectacular” (and, it is often argued, dumbed-down) nature (e.g., Andrew Lloyd Webber). This general trend bodes ill for the future marketability of new works of traditional, “verbal” dramatic theater (in the manner of Rattigan, Pinter, Stoppard, and Shepard, for ex.)]

Cinema, on the other hand, is the more malleable medium, with a vast vocabulary of visual techniques and possibilities that are more or less unique to that medium (see below). I agree that most Hollywood movies skew “visual,” but that partially reflects the growing dependence on the international market for revenue. Movies of a more spectacular nature (think “summer blockbusters”) – are on the whole more popular and “translate” better to non-English and developing-world markets than do, say, Victorian drawing-room dramas. But that particularly post-1970 trend is more reflective of the modern global economy than of film as an art form, per se.

Now, having got my manifesto out of the way, I agree with the OP that film is simply more exciting than theater, generally speaking. Basically, it comes down to the technological array available to it (some uniquely) as an art form, which permit a vastly greater range of expression, in both communication and action:

Visual effects:

Lenses: Wide-angle, telescopic, fish-eyed, Kubrick’s fabled custom Zeiss lenses for filming candlelight; polarized lenses, shooting day-for-night; color filters…

Film treatments: B/W and various color stocks; extreme/moderate/light grain, color tints; various degrees of exposure; “retro” or nostalgic film treatments (i.e., sepia, added striations and dirt, simulating historic film and obsolete videocams, etc.); different aspect ratios; even “3-D”.

Directing & editing tricks: closeups and zooms, dolly shots, tracking shots, reaction shots, crane shots, handheld cams, Steadicams, P.O.V. shots (including not just people but objects, like bullets); jump cuts, graphic match cuts, freeze-frames, multiple frames, speeding up/slowing down/reverses/repeats; stop-action photography; wipes (many different kinds of those); dissolves (ditto); titles and title cards; [conversational] counterpoint editing, montage sequences, stream-of-consciousness montage editing…
Sound Effects (more than just a Kinks album!):

Diagetic/nondiagetic sound; Foley effects; various stereo sound technologies (Dolby, THX, etc.); various miking techniques that enable the faintest sounds to be heard; postproduction dialogue looping; multitracking…

In a play, a character might refer to a battle having taken place, and might even venture a very limited portrayal of some field action. A movie, OTOH, could take you to the theatre of operations and show you the soldiers storming the beachhead and shooting, getting shot, and drowning; a bullet’s progress; the huge, thundering explosions of the ammo dump on fire; the aerial dogfight overhead; the treads of a tank grinding a man into a pulp; the stream-of-consciousness last thoughts of a dying man, etc. etc.

You can always translate a play into film, albeit sometimes a rather dull film. (In fact, several plays of each of the four playwrights cited above have been translated into movies.) But can you imagine trying to “reverse engineer” visually innovative films like “Citizen Kane” and “Blade Runner” to the stage? What would be the point?

13

My (very recent) exboyfriend was the same was as the OP. Unless I was directly involved with the theatrical performance he wanted nothing to do with it, and even then it was a trial for him. The fact that theatre is a huge part of my life ended up causing problems when he was unable to find the joy that I do in it.

I agree very much with Cervaise, however. There is no way I could have put it so eloquently and well thought-out.

I do think that another problem is that many people try to view theatre the same way that they view films. And because one is more verbal than visual, they should be viewed differently. Personally, I find the more I know about a play, the more I can enjoy it. I want to know what else the director has done, and what the original script is like so that I can see what the director’s vision is. Then again, I have training in this, so it is only natural for me. With a film, I like to go in knowing next to nothing about it. I find it so much more enjoyable that way.

filmore, The Nutcracker is not a good basis for comparison. Try some independant theatre performances in your area. Some community stuff. Also try the professional, spectacle stuff. Try as much variety as possible. If you decide to swear off theatre forever (as my ex did), it’s okay. It can’t be for everyone, I suppose.

14

Sure that wasn’t Le Petomaine you saw?

15

Snort

But I wanted to point to something. A previous poster said that recent musicals are “more spectacle/less intellectual” than in the past. Actually this is not true. Musicals have been fairly stupid for generations – just look at 42nd Street – basically a series of dance numbers loosely hung together with a plot – or even the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, of which the best that can be said is they they are very silly, indeed.*

However, I must argue against the poster who claimed that calling theater a “verbal” medium was just a veiled hint that it is more intellectual. I point again to Gilbert & Sullivan for refutation of that claim. They are extremely verbal, using extensive word play (which can sometimes only be understood on repeated viewing) without a shred of intellectualism ever entering the production.

*This is not an indictment of Gilbert & Sullivan or musicals in general. They just aren’t very intellectual.

16

Some of the current or more recent hits on Broadway;

The Lion King
Beauty and the Beast
Hairspray
The Producers

All were films first then made into a stage play.

Also include Footlose, Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy, less successful but were films first and plays later.

I agree with you that films can be as intellectual as plays but I don’t think Crevasie was saying that.

Basically I don’t think the OP has seen very good plays or at least very good performances of plays.

Watching Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh was an amazing expierence for me and everyone in the theatre.

17

I completely agree that the difference between film and theatre is a matter of visual versus verbal media. When I was in high school, my French teacher took us on a field trip to the University of Oklahoma to see a production of Tartouffe performed in French by French actors. It was the single most boring night of my life. And I dearly love live theatre. I understood the first line of the play, “Je m’appelle Dorine (My name is Dorine).” After that, I was totally lost. And the thing is, as plays go, the comedy in Tartouffe is fairly visual as I recall, but that didn’t matter since I couldn’t understand what was being said.

Hello Again, I agree with what you said about musicals never having been all that intellectual and I think that’s unfortunate because I really love music theatre. It really pisses me off when I mention that I like The Phantom of the Opera or other musicals of its ilk and some one chastises me for listening to shallow dreck, then procedes to sing the praises of The Sound of Music or another musical from that era. Fortunately, there are some intelligent musicals out there. Cabaret, William Finn’s Falsettos musicals (the Marvin Trilogy), and most of Sondheim’s later stuff are good examples.

I’m sorry you haven’t gotten as much out of live theatre as you’d hoped, filmore. May I ask, though, exactly what plays have you seen? If I knew what you’d seen and not liked, I might be able to make some recommendations. Also, it would help to know what part of the country you live in and what, if any, metropolitan areas you are within reasonable driving distance of.

18

My stage experience has been strictly amateur, so I’ve a question for any professional stage performers following this thread.

I would imagine that the best time to see a play would be opening night…the raw energy, the excitement from your first audience, etc.

How can you keep the energy level up for a Thursday matinee 6 months lateer?

19

I posted something similar a while back. Many plays are just talky and pretentious - the actors seem like mouthpieces for the playwright’s pop sophmoric philosophy. The playwright’s presense is sometimes so obvious I wonder when s/hes gonna pop on stage to take a bow. Not all plays are like this but the medium, for reasons already stated by others, tends to attract this type of writer.

20

The good plays I’ve seen are “Tuna Christmas/4th of July” with the original actors. I’ve seen several local plays but I can’t remember their names. And I’ve seen the touring productions of “Tommy”, “Dead Men Walking”, and “Rent”.

It just seems that it doesn’t hold my attention. I find my mind wandering thinking about the lighting or how they did the set design.

Maybe it is the exagerated actions which are the problem. I see the actors as pretending to be the characters they play instead of really being those characters. For example, there might be a farmer and when he has something to say, he’ll sweep his arm out in a grand gesture, put his foot up on a bench, rest his forearm on his knee and say, “Well, by golly, blah blah blah.” It’s so unnatural that it highlights the fact that it’s a guy pretending to be a farmer. In a movie, the gestures can be more subtle and natural so I think that guy is a farmer. And I do understand they have to do it that way so that the audience can see the character.

When I see a movie, the story seems to flow over me. It’s much the same when I read a book. I can forget I’m holding a book in my hand and not even be aware of turning the pages. But put the actors on stage and I can’t get to that same state.