The dream of watching your favourite theatre production on a stage in London or New York is within reach. Well, sort of.
Art house and cinema chain Cinema Nouveau screen live theatre productions from Broadway, the National Theatre and the Young Vic in their Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban cineplexes.
What began as sporadic screenings in 2009, under the banner “alternative content”, to broaden the art house’s offerings, have become regular monthly affairs with two and sometimes three new productions. They even include art exhibitions and behind-the-scenes footage.
“This project has been a success and is going from strength to strength. All our theatres are generally fully booked,” said Lola Gallant, brand manager of Cinema Nouveau.
From Saturday, March?28, local audiences can catch Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from the Royal Opera House’s Royal Ballet in London.
Stage productions, such as Of Mice and Men, are filmed live and broadcast by satellite to more than 2?000 cinemas around the world. Some countries can watch the productions live, but others, such as South Africa, screen the productions a few weeks later.
The National Theatre in London has used digital technology to its advantage and has broadened its audience with the National Theatre Live project.
The Tony award-winning War Horse was a hit in cinemas in Britain and is regarded as the most successful stage production to be screened by National Theatre Live.
A broadcast of the National’s production of War Horse drew a cinema audience of 120000, compared with the 1024 seat capacity of the New London Theatre where the live show was being staged, according to the Independent in Britain.
War Horse
The 1947 Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire, was one of the productions screened in South Africa at Cinema Nouveau.
The new production of the Pulitzer prize-winning tragi-drama, directed by Benedict Andrews, was shot at the Young Vic theatre in London with a live audience. The production included a revolving stage, which was a nice touch by the set designer, and the cast was successful in bringing the play into modern society.
Watching a production such as A Streetcar Named Desire on a stage is one thing, but seeing it on a cinema screen is a surreal experience. Watching in a cinema, you are aware that you are on the outside looking in, wishing you were part of the Young Vic audience in real time. Still, the experience is satisfying. Plus, there are some advantages to watching a stage production in a cinema – such as being seated in comfortable chairs and being able to eat popcorn. It’s like having the best seat in the house.
The gap between the theatre experience and audiences has been bridged, but at what cost?
British playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who ran the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, told the BBC during an interview in 2014 that “one’s fear” is that theatres in Britain will “stop doing plays and they’ll all be streamed live” from cinemas.
“It’s an invidious solution because audiences, unless they’ve been there in London, will not have the effect of watching live performance,” Ayckbourn said. “They’ll have a second-hand live performance, which isn’t really what we’re after.”
The National Theatre’s director of broadcast and digital, David Sabel, has a different take on this theatre transformation. He told the Telegraph that cinemas are getting a new audience through live streaming; an audience that might not have gone to the cinema before. “Cinema-going has been inadvertently rejuvenated.”
Gallant echoes Sabel’s words. “The rest of the world is going in this direction too. “This has drawn in new audiences to the cinemas,” she says. “The cinema ticket is a lot cheaper than a flight to London.”
The possibility of having one of the local theatre productions screened at Cinema Nouveau is one Gallant is open to. There are no plans yet for such a project, but it is not impossible.