Reading notes for "Can Theater and Media Speak the Same Language?" by Arnold Aronson

Though many have attempted the mixing of projected images or movies with theatre, the two are completely different vocabularies and cannot easily mix. Partially this has to do with the differences in how art forms represent their subjects. For example, two-dimensional arts such as photography or painting depict objects, but they would never be mistaken for actually being the object, no matter how realistically they are shown. Instead, they serve to merely signify the objects drawn. Theater, on the other hand, “is the only art form to use that which is signified as the signifier of that object” (Aronson 87), meaning that it exists in the real, three-dimensional world. Instead of merely showing an idea of an object, theater involves the actual object itself. The sets and scenery all exist in a solid form so that if the viewer wished, they could step onto the stage and touch them, feel them, actually be in the world depicted.
Another factor is the frame in which the art is presented. For two-dimensional art forms, the frame is the canvas or the photograph; the objects only exist on that frame, though they may ideally stretch beyond them. The frame for theater is the stage itself, or sometimes even the whole theater, in which the actions are taking place in the present, rather than images of the past as shown in two-dimensional art. This fact of it occurring as the viewer watches is what sets theater apart from other media and art forms. Movies are similar in some aspects to theater, but they still are only recordings, only showing the past, though the actions take place in the present. This is a key part of why movies and theater do not mix well, as they contrast each other in the ways that events are created and displayed.
Furthermore, the juxtaposing of these two forms of art together on one another breaks up the focus of the audience through the uses of multiple frames. Movies and projected images must appear on some sort of screen or backdrop, a two-dimensional frame attempting to work within the three-dimensional world of the theater. The audience sees the projected images in their own frame, taking them for what they are, but placing that frame as an object amidst the larger frame of the stage production. The two clash, not being able to work together well. The differences between the two exist over their dimensional structure, place in past or present, and even in their tangibility. The theater is full of physical objects that take up space, have volume, actually exist in the present moment; oppositely, movies and projected images are really nothing more than light cast upon a screen, and can be turned off in an instant. Theater exists and cannot be destroyed, whereas movies and images only exist for that moment. Due to these differences in frame and structure, the two do not mix well in general.


-Josh Hungerford