The Photoplay

by Susan Koenig

BA in English, May 2012, University of Arizona

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 17, 2015

Thesis directed by

Ayanna Thompson Professor of English

Table of Contents

The Photoplay: An Introduction 1

The NT Live Photoplay of the Donmar Warehouse’s Coriolanus: A Case Study 11

The Best of All Possible (Theoretical) Worlds: The Beginnings of a Theoretical Framework 16

Audience, Accessibility, and Creativity: The Good, the Bad, and the Illegal 46

Conclusions and Connections: The Photoplay and The Future 76

Works Cited 79

The Photoplay: An Introduction

Television, as a parasite, strangled its host by offering itself not as an

extension of the theatrical experience but as an equivalent replacement for

that experience. – Philip Auslander1

In his seminal book Liveness, Philip Auslander offers this lively metaphor of parasite and host to describe the relationship between television, and by extension cinema, and live theatrical performance. However, he established this metaphor in 1999.

Fifteen years later, there has been a revolution in theatre: the host is fighting back. I am not referring to some sort of comeback, nor am I referring to what Auslander described as theatre’s attempt to replicate “the discourse of mediatization,” which has been occurring for decades in the incorporation of media technologies and frameworks (24). Rather, I am referring to theatre reworking its place within our media culture to include recording and subsequently screening performances in order to expand their reach and allow larger audiences than ever to see these performances. What I am referring to, in a more concrete example, are programs like The National Theatre Live (NT Live) and The Globe on

Screen.

The theatre’s ability to remediate itself through specifically filmic discourse is part of what can be understood as the spiral evolution of performance. We begin with the live performance itself, prior to the development of the media. As media begins to take over, live performance cycles around to include aspects of this media: its contexts, tools and technologies, and ways of presenting itself. As the spiral continues, the relationship between the live and the mediatized tightens, and now we have reached the point on the

1 Auslander, Liveness, 23 1

spiral where theatre is not just using the discourse of mediatization, but mediatization itself. Thus theatre is working to situate itself as a direct alternative to, or even subset of, the mediatized. Programs like NT Live and The Globe on Screen have been pioneers in this work, broadcasting selections from their seasons across the globe.

These programs owe their origins to William Sargent’s Electronovision, specifically his recording of Richard Burton’s Hamlet. Electronovision was first developed in 1963 as an alternative to traditional film techniques. Spyros Skouras, president of Fox, hoped to develop a technique that would allow the company to “put on special sports events or fancy musical shows – ‘bringing Oklahoma! to Kansas’ – which combine the glitter and polish of a Hollywood Technicolor production with the freshness of live action” (qtd in Leff 20). While Skouras never realized his vision, Electronovision developed as a response to that same desire. As part of the process of Electronovision, up to seven cameras could be used to “capture existing stage productions with virtually no additional illuminations” (Leff 21). The captured shots were then electronically sent to the director who could manipulate the multiple images and edit them into the desired sequences.

Since Electronovision, much of capturing stage productions on film has been done by outside organizations, such as PBS’ Great Performances series, rather than as in- house productions. All of that began to change in 2006 when The Metropolitan Opera in

New York City started to broadcast their operas to cinemas, a program known as The

Met: Live in HD. The series was created in the hopes that it would “help save opera from otherwise inevitable obsolescence in the age of new media” and has since been applauded for its “ability to reach far-flung audiences” (Steichen 444-445). The Met saw financial

success with their series, and they saw it quickly. In 2005, their radio and television broadcasts made approximately $300,000; in 2006, the year the HD broadcasts were introduced, the broadcasts brought in about $2.4 million, and revenue continues to grow season after season (Steichen 449-450). Seeing the success of The Met: Live in HD, other theatres started to produce their own broadcasts, the most notable being NT Live.

The National Theatre first decided to broadcast its performances live to cinemas across the United Kingdom, and show recordings in other countries at later dates, as part of their 2009-2010 season. The first performance they broadcast was Phèdre, starring

Helen Mirren. Approximately 50,000 people saw that production in approximately 200 cinemas around the world. Five years later they are still going strong, with productions like Frankenstein gaining such popularity that, years after the initial broadcast, it’s still being shown in some of the 600 international cinemas that now subscribe to the NT Live seasons. These seasons have recently started to include live broadcasts from other production companies, such as the Donmar Warehouse’s Coriolanus – an intriguing reversion to outside companies creating these recordings.

This rapid expansion is not just seen in their broadcasts – their income from NT

Live has also been increasing. The National Theatre recently released their 2013-2014 financial report. Revenue from NT Live screenings rose 179% from the previous season to 6.7 million pounds. That seems like a paltry sum when you consider their record 99.9 million pound income, but the massive growth indicates an even greater uptick than the

National Theatre expected (Quinn “National Theatre Generates Record £100m

Income”).). If this trend continues, their income from NT Live will grow exponentially and become a vital part of the National Theatre’s funding. This rapid growth is why I

have chosen NT Live as the primary program addressed in this thesis. While the filmed live performance is gaining ground across the theatrical board, NT Live is leaps and bounds ahead of other theatres in the amount of programming they produce, which means it allows for the largest pool of filmed live performances to draw from.

Additionally, what the 179% increase in NT Live revenue shows is the profitability of the program and the demand for accessible theatre. Those who cannot afford a plane ticket to London or the ever-skyrocketing prices of theatre tickets can now pay a much lower admittance to a cinema and see the same great production. Except, it is not really the same great production, is it? The introduction of a camera and adding the process of remediation into the equation has a much larger effect on the production than

NT Live likes to admit. The NT Live show a patron sees is, ultimately, very different from the National Theatre production another patron sees.

My realization of this difference first occurred when I was watching the NT Live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse’s Coriolanus. What I was seeing was not what someone in the orchestra at the Donmar Warehouse would see, and vice versa. Auslander explains that "because the programs are edited, however, the home audience does not see the same performance as the studio audience, but sees a performance that never took place" (22). As an NT Live production, Coriolanus exists in a liminal space between filmed and live, typically understood as binaries. However, NT Live and programs like it actually cause a breakdown of that binary. While these broadcasts require a number of film techniques to be successful, it is these very techniques that separate them from live performances. Unfortunately this can lead to academic study focusing on one or the other of these aspects, which results in an incomplete picture of these filmed live performances.

The lack of a term to refer to these filmed live performances is yet another barrier to a complete picture of these performances. How are we, as performance theorists, supposed to address this new and shifting landscape if we don’t have the proper terminology? First, performance studies as a field desperately needs a term for filmed stage productions because by filming a stage production the performance has been remediated, and thus essentially changed. Secondly, filmed stage productions are becoming more widespread. NT Live’s seasons have ballooned from five broadcasts during their first season to eight in their fourth. The Globe recently made many of the filmed stage productions from their Globe-to-Globe festival available online and continues to broadcast certain shows from their seasons. The Stratford Festival in Canada has plans to broadcast productions of Shakespeare’s complete works over the next 10 years (Purcell “Three Stratford Fest Productions”).

Beyond the realm of filmed stage productions released to the public, many theatres have created a digital archive of their own productions. In Washington, DC, the

Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive (WAPAVA) has been archiving local productions since 1993. Surviving mostly on grants, including some from the National

Endowment for the Arts, WAPAVA allows the public access to these archived performances on DVD. The only requirement is that you know where to look – the

Martin Luther King DC Public Library and The Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland College Park campus. PBS’ Great Performances series has been recording stage productions and showing them for decades. Some selected performances have opted to rework themselves into proper films, such as Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth, but most have maintained their filmed live performance status.

Recently, NBC took to streaming live musicals on their channel and subsequently releasing them on DVD. It appears the network plans to make a Christmas tradition out of this, but also intend to use it as a way to launch revivals of musicals, as with The Wiz, their planned 2015 broadcast (Wagmeister “NBC Reveals ‘The Wiz’”). All of this is to say that these filmed live performances are becoming more and more prevalent and widespread, and thus the need for a term becomes greater.

The term “event cinema” has been used to describe any one-off event broadcast into cinemas. This would include filmed live productions like NT Live, but it would also include sports events, classic movie showings, concerts, and other broadcasts that I am working to exclude from this analysis. Thus, while it is appropriate to use for inclusivity, event cinema simply is not precise enough for my purposes. Additionally, I want to include productions that are not necessarily shown in cinemas. I am looking for a term that specifically describes filmed live performances of theatrical productions, however they are transmitted.

In Liveness, Auslander uses the term “mediatized performance” to discuss filmed live performances, defining it as “performance that is circulated on television, as audio or video recordings, and in other forms based in technologies of reproduction" (5). Again, an appropriately descriptive term, but too broad for my purposes. I am specifically focusing on video recordings, not necessarily circulated on television. To talk unambiguously about filmed live theatre productions of plays and musicals, we must look elsewhere to develop a term.

In his essay “Live from the Met: Digital Broadcast Cinema, Medium Theory, and

Opera for the Masses,” Paul Heyer proposes the term Digital Broadcast Cinema (DBC), arguing:

The most recent example of the Met’s outreach I have elected to call

“digital broadcast cinema” (DBC). Although the term eludes precise

definition, DBC as it is elaborated here can be said to include the

broadcast into movie theatres, either live or recorded (some Met

broadcasts are repeated as encores), of various arts and entertainment

productions that, like cinema, have a narrative format. Besides opera, this

would include ballet, musicals, and theatrical productions; it would

exclude sports, concerts, and newsworthy public events. (593, original

emphasis)

While I appreciate Heyer’s basis in narrative format, I still find myself not entirely satisfied. He specifies that DBCs are broadcasts sent to cinemas, and I want to include broadcasts regardless of mode of transmission – cinema, television, or the Internet.

Additionally, Heyer includes opera and ballet in his assessment. While I believe that opera and ballet should be analysized in this sort of context, my paper focuses specifically on theatre, and to a more minor extent, musicals. My focus on plays and musicals and exclusion of ballet and opera means that Heyer’s term is still too broad.

It is with all of this, and the fact that filmed live performance is a mouthful, in mind that I propose using the term “photoplay” to refer to these filmed live performances of plays and musicals. The term photoplay has a long history in the film industry, though it fell out of use around the beginning of World War II. The Oxford English Dictionary

defines photoplay as “a cinematic representation of a play, drama, etc.; a motion picture.”

The most recent usage listed, from 2003, uses photoplay to refer specifically to silent films. The oldest usage listed is from 1909. With such a long history, it is easy to see where the term photoplay originally came from: the time when cinema was borrowing from theatre in order to establish itself as a new form of media. However, what I am describing is theatre borrowing from cinema in order to expand its current place in the realm of media. I argue that this reversal presents itself at a perfect time in order for us to appropriate, or even remediate, this term to suit performance theory purposes.

Thus I present my definition of photoplay. A photoplay is any live theatre production that has been remediated in its entirety through a camera, without cinematic changes being made for the filming. This includes both plays and musicals, but excludes productions like Rupert Goold’s Macbeth, which began as a stage production and was reworked into a film for PBS’ Great Performances. I hope with this proposal to bring the term back into usage specifically with academia in mind. Now that there is a term available for performance theorists to use, perhaps analysis of these photoplays will increase and their place within the realm of performance studies will be acknowledged and thoroughly examined.

In order to propagate the thorough examination of the photoplay, I will first offer a brief analysis of the NT Live’s broadcast of Coriolanus as a photoplay. This analysis will highlight the ways in which analysis of a photoplay differ from the analysis of live performance. Following this case study, I will offer the beginnings of a theoretical framework for the photoplay. Here I will address various film theories and combine them with our concept of live performance to create a kind of theoretical scaffolding. The main

concepts contained within this scaffolding are Auslander’s concept of liveness versus mediatization, cinema of attractions, apparatus theory, and suture theory. While I argue that various aspects of these theories are applicable to the photoplay, my main focus is on how the photoplay operates in a different manner than other forms of media we are more familiar with. Additionally, the way the photoplay operates between liveness and mediatization means that the way these theories are traditionally understood to function is not necessarily the case. Thus, the photoplay offers a chance at a new understanding of these theories.

In the second portion of my thesis, I will address the way the photoplay is altering theatre audiences. The photoplay’s ability to increase theatre accessibility is unparalleled in modern theatre, meaning it has the unique ability to bring together the traditional

“high” culture of the theatre with the “low” culture of the masses. Here, I choose Internet fandom as the new audience to focus my analysis on. Internet fandom offers a new and complex understanding of theatre audiences, as it allows individuals from all over the globe to express their opinions on theatre. Furthermore, it encourages these people to express themselves creatively, by sharing fan-made content that incorporates or is based upon the photoplay. That being said, these fandoms do bear a darker side, as does the

Internet in general. Internet piracy comes hand in hand with a well-known presence in the realm of the mediatized. Thus, I will address the ways in which photoplay producers are countering and encountering piracy. Additionally, the way current law operates leaves an unclear path for both photoplay producers and creators who wish to utilize the photoplay as inspiration. While I am not an expert in copyright law, I will propose a few things we must keep in mind as the likelihood of legislating the intellectual property of the

photoplay increases with its popularity. Ultimately, with these two sections I hope to offer an overview of the photoplay and its current location in both academia and theatre at large.

The NT Live Photoplay of the Donmar Warehouse’s Coriolanus: A Case Study

In order to make my thought process clearer, I want to include a small analysis of the production that prompted my line of thinking: The NT Live photoplay of the Donmar

Warehouse’s Coriolanus. However, my offering will be an analysis of the production as a photoplay, not as a live performance. As such, I will offer a brief analysis of the introduction by Emma Freud, a characteristic shared by all NT Live photoplays. I will then analyze the first scene of the performance, which lasts approximately two minutes and offers a surprising amount of material for such a short scene. With this analysis I will illustrate some of the theoretical concepts that I will discuss in more depth in the next section of my thesis.

The photoplay begins with a shot of the audience in the balcony at the Donmar

Warehouse. They are a typical theatre audience – chatty, drinking wine, and generally entertaining themselves before the show begins. This shot serves to establish the outer narrative of the photoplay as a night at the theatre. It operates as a kind of mise-en- abyme, setting the outer narrative of attending the theatre against the inner narrative that will soon begin: the performance of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. This outer narrative is recalled a number of times, in shots of the audience during the intermission and when the audience can be seen in the backgrounds of various shots. Sometimes this recall is clearly purposeful, as I will illustrate below. Other times it is merely a by-product of the photoplay’s filming – there is no way to erase the audience, and if they somehow managed to do so during post-production the recording wouldn’t have the feel of an NT

Live photoplay. It wouldn’t be “live”.

As with all NT Live broadcasts, Emma Freud welcomes us to the National

Theatre. Except, she informs us, we are not at the National. She takes the opportunity to geographically locate us “across the Thames” at the Donmar Warehouse. While it seems insignificant, this moment is important because it signals to us that the National is branching outside its comfort zone – across a river, even – to bring us a larger slice of the

London theatre scene. Freud then lists off the upcoming broadcasts in the NT Live season. The most remarkable is her mention of King Lear starring Simon Russell Beale and “directed by Sam Mendes, who also directed James Bond Skyfall. It [Skyfall] opened last week, and the press are calling it ‘epic’.” Now, instead of advertising the range of photoplays offered by NT Live, Freud is advertising the cultural clout of the artists involved in NT Live photoplays. She also mentions the interview with director Josie

Rourke during intermission, where she points out Tom Hiddleston was recently named

MTV’s Sexiest Man Alive. Rather than the cultural clout of the director of a film that would go on to win the BAFTA for Best British Film, Freud now alludes to the mass appeal offered by an actor as well-known as Hiddleston. Before the performance itself even begins, we see NT Live offering us a narrative beyond going to the theatre or the play onstage. NT Live is setting up the narrative of NT Live as benevolent theatre- bringer. This narrative is one that the photoplay returns to time and time again, and becomes vital to the way in which the photoplay frames its creators and itself.

When the performance of Coriolanus begins, the still murmuring crowd falls silent. A soft blue light appears as the camera pans right, and then cuts to a medium shot of a young boy. When the camera pans out to a long shot, we see the boy is painting the outline of a red box on the floor. Already, the camera is obscuring actions, which will be

a running motif of this play, as with the Tribunes’ plot and even affair, and within the

Coriolanus photoplay itself. The camera follows the boy by panning back to the left, and as other figures walk across the stage to form a line downstage the camera begins to rise, offering an aerial shot that allows the photoplay viewer to see both the boy continuing to draw and the other members of the cast who are deliberately avoiding stepping on the wet paint lines. Here, the camera is offering us a view not seen by the audience at the Donmar and, thus, is actually altering how we as the photoplay audience view the performance compared to the way someone in the orchestra at the Donmar would view the live play.

The camera then cuts to a medium shot focused on three actors: Jacqueline

Boatswain, Hadley Fraser, and Birgitte Hjort Sørensen. Bright spotlights pierce the otherwise dark stage, illuminating the cast. However, Boatswain, a dark-skinned black woman, can hardly be seen despite her location in the foreground of the shot. Here we witness a moment of both racial marking, as different skin tones react differently to the same lighting scheme, but also a moment of the camera highlighting that racial marking.

Because the camera, however high-definition it may be, cannot pick up the details the human eye can, Boatswain is practically invisible until she moves. Fraser and Sørensen, however, are both white, and completely visible in the shot despite Fraser not being nearly as well lit as Sørensen.

When the cast line moves, they turn and slowly walk to the back wall of the stage.

The stationary camera reveals more of their bodies as they move further away. It is in this shot we get a momentary glimpse of what has been happening on the back wall since the ensemble entered. A jump cut to another aerial shot shows those of us viewing the photoplay what those at the Donmar already know because their vision is not limited by a

camera. Two men have been graffitiing the back wall, and have almost finished writing out two words in white letters that are almost as tall as they are. However, again, because of the darkened lighting and the camera we cannot make out exactly what it is they are writing until the lights come up, signaling the scene change.

As we get that glimpse during the aerial shot, we also see the cast sit down in chairs that have been set out upstage, almost up against the back wall. As the camera directs our gaze, when the lights come up we see a few of the orchestra seats to either side of the cast’s seating. Such an arrangement seems to convert the house into a theatre- in-the-round, especially when it is shown in an aerial establishing shot along with these orchestra seats. This pattern of seating is recreated in a number of other scenes, which works to erase the typical separation between the stage and the house, breaking down that traditional binary in a way that is emphasized by the camera in a way that is not present at the live performance.

The ways in which this newly combined house/stage is used further erodes the typical house and stage separation. During the many scenes on the senate floor, the audience is addressed as members of the senate in how the actors are positioned facing not towards their fellow actors, but towards the house, the other actors lined up behind them. The blurring of house and stage goes beyond simple immediacy, treating the audience almost as part of the cast, and certainly as part of the story, which they are no longer just watching but also participating in.2 Of course, this effect is not nearly as effective when viewing the production as a photoplay. In framing the actors mostly in

2 For a fuller treatment on this phenomenon, see Stephen Purcell’s Shakespeare and Audience in Practice 14

medium shots, the photoplay draws attention to the fact that its audience is separated from the action by a camera. In a way, the camera undoes the work that the staging does, creating an even larger gap between actors and audience.

What I find fascinating about the analysis offered here is that my in-depth analysis of the photoplay is based only upon the first two minutes of the performance and the very short introduction by Emma Freud. While I do allude to later moments in the photoplay, most of my illustrations come before the characters even speak, before the action of Shakespeare’s play even begins. If the photoplay can offer such a rich analysis in just a few minutes, it’s a wonder that there isn’t more detailed analysis available on the photoplay. Clearly this new concept within performance studies offers us a rich landscape to begin theorizing and analyzing.

The Best of All Possible (Theoretical) Worlds: The Beginnings of a Theoretical

Framework

Now that I have presented what a photoplay is, we must move on to conceptualizing the photoplay in relation to performance studies. As we begin to conceptualize, a number of questions arise. How do we start to theorize photoplays?

What kinds of considerations should be made in our theoretical concept of “photoplay”?

These questions, while important, are incredibly broad, which can be helpful and even necessary when first establishing a new theoretical concept. However, I will work to be as pointed and direct in my inclusions of various theories. Initially, I propose that we look at photoplays theoretically as a synthesis of both film and performance theories.

Essentially, and with very little nuance, the photoplay is a cinematic capture of a live performance, and because it encapsulates both these things we need to approach the photoplay from perspectives that allow us to address it as such.

In this section of my thesis, I will present some of the many ways we can begin building a theoretical framework for photoplays. First, I will address the concepts of live and mediatization as they fit into photoplays. This discussion of live and mediatized will be echoed throughout the rest of the arguments, as these additional arguments all stem from how we address live and mediatized in the photoplay. From there, we move into the way the photoplay plays with our traditional narrative cinema by incorporating some of the spectacle of cinema of attractions.

After situating photoplays more broadly into our concept of cinema, we then move into the specifics. As I have stated in my introduction, the camera plays a key part in the blurring of the live and filmed in the photoplay. Thus I will address various

concepts of the camera and apparatus theory in order to situate the camera within our theoretical framework of the photoplay. This includes everything from the physical camera, the way the camera frames the performance, its psychological effects on audiences and actors, and the ways we must reconsider our idea of the camera. From the camera we will shift into the way editing enters the arena and alters both what the camera has captured and what we as photoplay viewers will see. Suture theory will come into play and be used to draw our attention to the fact that, in relation to the photoplay, our traditional idea of the suture in relation to film begins to unravel. Ultimately, with these varying supports, I hope to construct a theoretical framework accessible to performance studies that we can use going forward. The photoplay genre is only growing, and before we can address it as a whole we need to be able to theorize it appropriately.

Photoplays, Liveness, and Mediatization

When considering the place of photoplays in the debate about liveness and mediatization, we must again turn to Auslander:

"Theatre and the media: rivals or partners?" My own answer to this

question is unequivocal: at the level of cultural economy, theatre (and live

performance generally) and the mass media are rivals, not partners.

Neither are they equal rivals: it is absolutely clear that our current cultural

formation is saturated with, and dominated by, mass media representations

in general, and television in particular. (1)

His assessment of theatre and the media as unequal rivals, I argue, is still technically true.

However, it is clear that the landscape is beginning to change. In turning to photoplays,

theatre is starting to use media against itself, making theatre more relevant and trying to regain some of its lost cultural economy. However, this emergence of remediated live theatre has ignited a debate in the theatrical realm that has existed for many years in other live performance arenas, such as sports events and concerts. That debate lies primarily in how we conceptualize photoplays. Are they live performances, or are they films? The problem is, as I have stated, that they are sometimes both, and sometimes neither.

Auslander’s Liveness offers itself as a consideration of said debate, meditating on the consideration of what makes something live and what effect mediatization has on the live. One of the cruxes of Auslander’s consideration is in “the common assumption is that the live event is 'real' and that mediatized events are secondary and somehow artificial reproductions of the real" (3). Auslander argues that this view is exceedingly one- dimensional, and I have to agree. He goes on to argue that what we need is "a view that emphasizes the mutual dependence of the live and the mediatized and that challenges the traditional assumption that the live precedes the mediatized" (11). This view is precisely the lens through which we need to consider photoplays. The live and the mediatized are not at war in the photoplay. Rather, they coexist.

Furthermore, live theatre did not predate the mediatized photoplay. Rather, a different live theatre predated the mediatized photoplay. In other words, our definition of liveness is predicated on our understanding of the mediatized. As Auslander illustrates, our discourse of live theatre has its origins in the beginnings of mediatized television.

However, as our televisual and cinematic offerings became less theatrical and more distinct, the idea of live theatre started to feel a bit antiquated. Of course it's live - it's theatre. Adding “live” to the phrase felt linguistically redundant. Now that the photoplay

has entered the picture, live theatre has once again become a necessary phrase, in that we must now qualify one as live and the other as mediatized. That being said, live theatre still carries with it the implications of its relation to television. These connections lead to an evolving understanding of “live” theatre in relation to both television and photoplays.

Where this evolution will take us is hard to ascertain, as the photoplay is only the first step in the evolution of recording live productions.

As I began to argue in the introduction, photoplays exist between the live and the mediatized. Taking this a step further and looking at the process of creating a photoplay, the live and the mediatized exist simultaneously in the photoplay. What is happening on the stage at the Donmar Warehouse is indeed a live production of Coriolanus. However, once a camera captures that live performance, even though it is technically simulcast in the UK, it is no longer live. There is an intermediary, or perhaps a number of intermediaries, in the camera, the cameramen, the director of the filming, etc. The live performance is remediated, and this remediation creates an inherently different performance. Various aspects of the filming itself work to violate our concept of the live, while the hints of liveness that persist through the filming ensure that we cannot entirely suture ourselves into the photoplay as we would a narrative film.

Of course, this does not mean the photoplay has no narrative within it. Rather, the narrative of the photoplay seems to be the narrative of attending the theatre. Surprisingly, this narrative is partially constructed in the same ways other narratives are constructed around live events: "The rhetoric of mediatization embedded in such devices as the instant replay … at one time understood to be secondary elaborations of what was originally a live event, are now constitutive of the live event itself" (Auslander 25). The

immediate connection between the instant replay and the photoplay is not evident, however I would argue that the interviews and documentaries tied into the beginnings and intermissions of NT Live photoplays act in a similar way. While they do not rehash what we have already seen, they have become such an important and expected part of the

NT Live photoplay that they have become part of the photoplay’s “live” narrative.

In a way, this process of incorporating the mediatized is an extension of what

Auslander characterized as "the general response of live performance to the oppression and economic superiority of mediatized forms … to become as much like them as possible" (7). Indeed, photoplays are as close as live plays can get to becoming a film, without being entirely reworked into a film that exists independently of the live play.

On that note, I want to take a moment here to acknowledge the fact that not all theatre is barreling forward into a bright photoplay future, happily coexisting with the media. As Auslander states, "a number of theatres have displayed signs similar to the banner that flew outside the Alliance Theater in Atlanta declaring that its offerings are

'Not Available on Video,'" (6). However, these signs do not liberate theatres from their relationship to mediatization. In the culture we live in, it is impossible for any form of entertainment to exist independently of, at the very least, the discourse of mediatization.

That being said, I hesitate to allegorize the relationship between live and mediatized forms, through the relationship between live plays and remediated photoplays, as others have done with other related discourses. The concepts of live and mediatized are so vast in our culture that it is hard to essentialize their relationship. Furthermore, technology keeps advancing and changing in previously unthought-of ways. These advances and changes make it unwise to allegorize this relationship. Just as the allegory becomes

widely accepted, a technological advance makes it outdated. Thus, going forward, my argument will focus specifically on live performance’s relationship to film and how these two work together to create the entirely independent category of the photoplay.

The Return of the Cinema of Attractions?

When it comes to where the photoplay fits in our modern concepts of live and cinema, there are a number of genres to consider and ways to think about the photoplay.

While the obvious ways to think about photoplays are in our concepts of live performance and narrative cinema, narrative cinema just doesn’t quite fit what the photoplay produces. The best alternative to narrative cinema that presents itself the cinema of attractions, one of the earliest concepts of film.

It is important to remember Gunning’s argument that “Every change in film history implies a change in its address to the spectator, and each period constructs its spectator in a new way” (70). For the beginnings of cinema, that change in its address led to the birth of the cinema of attractions. Initial audiences were far more intrigued by the camera’s ability to capture an image than its ability to tell a story and produce a diegetic world. In our modern, narrative-driven film world we have a very distinct idea of these cinemas of attraction. The old-timey traveling circus that always seems to have an old fashioned projector that only ever projects L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat at an audience that runs screaming from the tent – that is our conceptualization of the cinema of attractions. While L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat certainly qualifies as part of that genre, there is far more to it than startling unassuming show-goers.

The cinema of attractions has a long and varied history, one that began as a way to showcase film’s ability to capture various images:

The potential of the new art did not lay in ‘imitating the movements of

nature’ or in ‘the mistaken path’ of its resemblance to theater. Its unique

power was a ‘matter of making images seen.’ It is precisely this harnessing

of visibility, this act of showing and exhibition which I feel cinema before

1906 displays most intensely. (Gunning 63-64, original emphasis)

Put more succinctly, according to Linda Williams, it was “the ability of the apparatus to offer attractions over its ability to absorb spectators into a diegetic world” (356) that helped establish cinema of attractions around the turn of the century. People were both fascinated and horrified by the camera’s ability to capture reality. If a still photograph could capture one’s soul, what monstrosity could a moving picture perpetrate? People were absolutely entranced. Gunning tells us “actuality films [films produced for the cinema of attractions that relied on reality] outnumbered fictional films [those with a narrative and diegesis that told a fictional story] until 1906” (64). Clearly these actuality films were taking the world by storm, virtually dominating the entire cinematic field until the concept of narrative began to take hold.

In fact, Gunning continues, the cinema of attractions extended beyond the screen:

Not only did the films consist of non-narrative sequences taken from

moving vehicles (usually trains), but the theater itself was arranged as a

train car, with a conductor who took tickets, and sound effects simulating

the click-clack of wheels or hiss of air brakes. Such viewing experiences

relate more to the attractions of the fairground than to the traditions of the

legitimate theater. (65)

While photoplays have yet to venture into the three-dimensional territory, they certainly follow the idea that “early audiences went to exhibitions to see machines demonstrated,

(the newest technological wonder, following in the wake of such widely exhibited machines and marvels as X-rays or, earlier, the phonograph) rather than to view films”

(66). The clearest connection here is with Electronovision. Electronovision was billed second only to Richard Burton himself – a powerful moment of name – “film clearly took the legitimate theater as its model, producing famous players in famous plays” (Gunning

68) – and technology creating a powerhouse production. Of course, modern photoplays entertain this idea by creating a certain mystique around the technology. At some point during their NT Future fundraising campaign, which began in 2010 just as the NT Live program took off, the National Theatre specified new equipment and remodeling of their theatre space to make NT Live broadcasts that much easier.

In her essay “Discipline and Fun: Psycho and Postmodern Cinema,” Linda

Williams identifies what she calls a “new” cinema of attractions, arguing:

We might distinguish between these experiences [early cinema of

attractions and the ‘new’ cinema of attractions] by considering the

attractions of the fair which beckon to viewers, surrounding them with

sights and shows from which they might choose, to the experience of

being caught up in the literal sensations of falling, flying, careening in the

roller coaster.” (Williams 356)

The earliest definitions of “attraction” in relation to cinema were drawn specifically from the fairgrounds. For these earlier theorists, specifically Eisenstein and Yuketvich, the attraction of the fairground was the rollercoasters. However, Williams distinguishes her rollercoaster from theirs. Their rollercoaster “declares its intentions; it is exhibitionistic and aims to astonish rather than deceive” (Buckland 144). Williams’ rollercoaster aims to narrate, which translates to deception and surprise: “many films are now set out, as a first order of business, to simulate the bodily thrills and visceral pleasures of attractions that not only beckon to us but take us on a continuous ride punctuated by shocks and moments of speed-up and slow-down” (Williams 357). Much like the modern rollercoasters that attempt to keep the rider in the dark, Williams’ rollercoaster is a violent, unsuspected, intense thrill ride. While photoplays don’t tend to follow that model, they also don’t quite fit the purely exhibitionist model of classic cinema of attractions.

In order to continue my consideration of photoplays and their relation to classic and new cinemas of attractions, we must consider three distinct and vital parts of the cinema of attractions: the spectator, their relation to the actor, and the narrative. These three aspects coalesce to a point on a spectrum that I now propose. When referring to photoplays, classic cinema of attractions and new cinema of attractions do not present themselves as a binary, but rather as two ends of a sliding scale. This spectrum arises from the fact that each photoplay is a separate production, and these individual productions combine cinema of attractions and narrative cinema in different proportions and highlight them in different ways. However, said photoplays always fall between

“entirely cinema of attractions” and “entirely new cinema of attractions.” As we move

further towards one end, the attraction supercedes any thought of narrative or diegesis.

Closer to the other end, narrative and diegesis are the emphasis, with attraction only considered in relation to those two concepts. I argue that photoplays always fall somewhere in the middle, and a discussion of the three concepts I previously singled out will help illustrate why.

The cinematic spectator has changed drastically in the years since cinema of attractions had its heyday. As Gunning initially argues, “the relation to the spectator set up by the films of both Lumière and Méliès (and many other filmmakers before 1906) had a common basis, and one that differs from the primary spectator relations set up by narrative film after 1906” (64). Cinema of attractions was “praised [for] its esthetics of astonishment and simulation … [and] its creation of a new spectator who contrasts with the ‘static,’ ‘stupid voyeur’ of traditional theater” (Gunning 66). This new spectator, which bridged the gap between theatre and cinema of attractions, had to contend with the spectator of narrative cinema, which bridged the gap between theatre and narrative cinema. The primary distinction between these two spectators lies in their respective cinemas’ acknowledgement of them.

Cinema of attractions actively worked to astonish their spectator, to display for them the wonders of the world they live in. Warren Buckland explains that “in the cinema of attractions, the spectator is not positioned as a voyeur absorbed into spying on a self- enclosed narrative world; instead, the cinema of attractions is exhibitionist, knowingly/reflexively addressing the spectator and providing him or her with a series of views” (143). When considering photoplays, we must ask ourselves what their relationship is to the spectator. Photoplays do not exist as “a self-enclosed narrative” in

the sense Buckland refers to. There is no diegesis in the sense that the world constructed in the film exists separately from ours, but there is the narrative of the play being filmed.

It is possible to argue that the narrative world of the play acts as a kind of diegesis. We must also consider the narrative of the theatre itself. While shots of the audience would not be considered part of the narrative of the play Coriolanus, they are in a way part of the narrative of going to see the play Coriolanus. While we might not normally consider going to the theatre a narrative in itself, NT Live and similar photoplay producers utilize the traditional language and atmosphere of the theatre to construct it as a narrative. It is as if there is a double narrative at work in the photoplay – the narrative of the play and the narrative of going to the play. The former is clearly set up as narrative cinema, but the latter most certainly belongs to the cinema of attractions. Thus photoplays lie somewhere in between the two.

Additionally, Williams points out that the “new” cinema of attractions “entails entirely different spectatorial disciplines and engages viewers in entirely different social experiences” (356). New cinema of attractions sutures its viewers into a narrative, but then uses modern cinematic techniques and codes to astonish the viewer, essentially utilizing the cinema of attractions. An example of new cinema of attractions would be

The Matrix. Released in 1999, the film does have a narrative and diegesis that spectator can be, and generally is, sutured into. However, it also uses incredible computer generated imagery to impress the spectator and provide them with a new attraction.

Ultimately, the film works to engage viewers in what was then a shockingly innovative spectatorial discipline. The spectator was expected to not only suture into a narrative, but to simultaneously be astonished by the attraction of the film’s computer generated

imagery. We could see this new discipline reflected in the reviews of the film. Of the plot, Roger Ebert wrote “It's cruel, really, to put tantalizing ideas on the table and then ask the audience to be satisfied with a shoot-out and a martial arts duel” (Ebert “The

Matrix Movie Review”). However, when it came to the visual effects, the attractions, he concluded:

It’s great-looking, both in its design and in the kinetic energy that powers

it. It uses flawlessly integrated special effects and animation to visualize

regions of cyberspace. It creates fearsome creatures, including mechanical

octopi. It morphs bodies with the abandon of "Terminator II." It uses f/x to

allow Neo and Trinity to run horizontally on walls, and hang in the air

long enough to deliver karate kicks. It has leaps through space, thrilling

sequences involving fights on rooftops, helicopter rescues and battles over

mind control. (Ebert “The Matrix Movie Review”)

Ebert’s assessment aligns with the majority of reviews still available sixteen years later.

The narrative was there, but the attractions were why you went to see The Matrix.

While photoplays work within a spectrum of cinema of attractions and narrative cinema, it is hard to see how the current photoplays produced relate to new cinema of attractions. That being said, I could see photoplays in the future being edited to include aspects of new cinema of attractions. Julie Taymor’s recent filming of her A Midsummer

Night’s Dream begins to move towards utilizing new cinema of attractions. Taymor described the filming, saying "We shot all performances straight through, putting cameras in different positions at each show, and then in the daytime we went onstage with handheld cameras… It’s very cinematic. There are no visual effects — they’re all live”

(Bowgen “Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”). In her film techniques,

Taymor encroaches on the new cinema of attractions. While I cannot personally vouch for the entire photoplay, as it has yet to be released beyond film festivals, the trailer offers views never before seen in photoplays. The most notable is a camera suspended from above, capturing what appears to be Puck rising from the stage into the rafters. However,

Taymor claims that all of the effects are actually live, and given the way new cinema of attractions defines itself, a photoplay must use special effects added in after the filming to really cross over into the new cinema of attractions genre. That being said, Taymor’s photoplay is certainly a step closer to the new cinema of attractions.

Moving on to the second aspect, the relationship between the actor and the spectator, we again see photoplays lying on a spectrum. The cinema of attractions is one

“that displays its visibility, willing to rupture a self-enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator” (Gunning 64). The most traditional way cinema of attractions solicits the spectator’s attention is the actor looking directly into the camera:

“the recurring look at the camera by actors. This action which is later perceived as spoiling the realistic illusion of the cinema, is here undertaken with brio, establishing contact with the audience” (Gunning 64). As narrative cinema overtook the cinema of attractions, “the look at the camera [became] taboo and the devices of cinema [were] transformed from playful ‘tricks’ – cinematic attractions (Méliès gesturing at us to watch the lady vanish) – to elements of dramatic expression, entries into the psychology of character and the world of fiction” (Gunning 68). There are moments in photoplays when an actor looks at a mark and the camera is directly in their line of site, making it seem like they are looking at the camera, and thus at the spectator. Much like the illusion of an

actor looking directly at an audience member, part of this is psychological phenomenon and part is coincidence. However, that does not stop the gaze from having the same effect it did in cinema of attractions, that of establishing a link between actor and spectator.

Thus, we see ourselves once again on a scale. On one end is the cinema of attractions with its purposeful camera stare; at the other is narrative cinema with camera stare as a taboo. The lack of purpose in some of the photoplay camera stares indicates that this is not the cinema of attractions. However, there is no indication that these stares are entirely accidental, and thus it cannot be entirely narrative cinema.

The third and final part to consider in the photoplay’s relationship to cinema of attractions is the narrative. As has been stated here multiple times, there is no narrative in cinema of attractions, nor is there a diegesis. Photoplays may contain aspects of each, but still seem to avoid categorization as either. When discussing the evolution of the cinema of attractions, Gunning mentions that “the cinema of attractions does not disappear with the dominance of narrative, but rather goes underground, both into certain avant-garde practices and as a component of narrative films, more evident in some genres (e.g., the musical) than in others.” (64). Gunning hits the nail on the head by singling out musicals.

Films of musicals and photoplays of musicals both emphasize that exhibitionist aspect that characterizes cinema of attractions, and photoplays of plays have enabled traditional theatre to join said musicals in using cinema of attractions as part of the narrative structure. As I previously argued, there is a double narrative at work in the photoplay: the narrative of the play and the attraction of going to the theatre. In the narrative work of NT

Live and other similar programs, they very purposefully use the attraction of going to the theatre as part of the narrative.

Beyond the attraction being used as a narrative device itself, the cinema of attractions had its own way of utilizing what we think of as traditionally narrative cinema techniques. Gunning singles out the close-up, arguing: “Many of the close-ups in early film differ from later uses of the technique precisely because they do not use enlargement for narrative punctuation, but as an attraction in its own right” (66). In the photoplay, the close-up seems to serve both as narrative punctuation and as an attraction. In Coriolanus, close-ups tend to be used during dramatic monologues. In the NT Live’s Othello, they serve to highlight various important moments and props, such as the Willow Song and the handkerchief. Thus, the close-up serves as a narrative device. However, close-ups also allow the production to highlight the fact that it is using famous actors. Most of the close-ups in Coriolanus linger on Tom Hiddleston’s face. While I will go into more detail about the relationship between famous actors and NT Live, in these moments the close- up is also serving to highlight the fact that you are watching Tom Hiddleston play

Coriolanus. Once again, photoplays present themselves somewhere in the middle of a sliding scale between close-ups serving an entirely narrative function, and as an attraction in their own right.

Considering the way in which photoplays use altered versions of aspects of cinema of attractions, it appears that photoplays are a kind of remediation of the cinema of attractions. Errki Huhtamo notes that “Cinerama in the 1950s and Imax and Omnimax since the early 1970 have actually been attempts to reestablish the ‘cinema of attractions’ as an alternative mode of cinematic experience” (169). Since the purpose of cinema of attractions was to appeal “to the audience’s sense of wonder that something… could have been captured on film at all” (Bolter and Grusin 156), then it follows that photoplays are

the natural successor to Imax in the sense that photoplays do in some ways reestablish the cinema of attractions. However, what photoplays work to reestablish is not the cinema of attractions that emerged around the turn of the 20th century. Photoplays take aspects of the cinema of attractions and use them to create a genre distinct from attractions, but also not entirely reliant on narrative cinematic modes.

The Apparatus of a Photoplay: The Camera and Its Effects

I have mentioned before that the introduction of an intermediary camera is the most immediate way of blurring the live and the mediatized in the photoplay. However, as Jean-Louis Baudry tells us, the apparatus is more than just the camera. It is “a network which includes the screen, the spectator, and the projector” (Baudry 190). Thus this section about the apparatus effect, while it does focus on the camera, will go beyond that and address the various ways in which the apparatus of the cinema works together to generate a theoretical concept of the photoplay.

First, it is vital that we understand what is meant when we use the word “camera.”

The problem with the term camera is that the physical camera itself “has traditionally been theorized in the same way as the author – as a single, monolithic entity guaranteeing meaning” (Buckland 169). Of course, this singular concept is about as inappropriate as it is possible to get. Not only is what the camera captures subjective, as it is being manipulated by the director, the camera operator, and more, what we see is equally subjective, having been altered significantly since it was initially filmed. Add to that the many different theoretical frameworks for film that involve the camera, and we are left with a multitude of cameras that can be hard to work through. Indeed, examining

traditional filmic discourse “leads to the identification of the many shifting, overlapping, contradictory conceptions of the camera that exist in public discourses about the cinema”

(Buckland 169). While I believe it is possible to use any number of these concepts to discuss the camera of the photoplay, there are certain conceptions of the camera that stand out and call for immediate theoretical examination.

In his book Projecting a Camera, Edward Branigan presents eight different ways of conceptualizing a camera. Given the scope of my project, I have pared these eight down to the three conceptualizations that are most evident in photoplays. All eight are listed in this handy chart Branigan provides, and various traits of each are summarized.

The three conceptions of the camera my arguments will focus on are the first, fourth, and sixth conceptions. Each of these conceptions in some way relates to the way photoplays utilize their camera and the way, I argue, we should be using the camera to construct a theoretical framework around the photoplay. Of course, there is room for all

of these cameras to enter into the theoretical framework. However, I have decided to focus specifically on these three because integrating all eight is a thesis in itself.

Branigan’s first camera is most easily understood as the camera as it function as a machine. He argues that this camera offers “a focus on sensory processes … [that] forms the basis of an illusion theory of meaning” (74, original emphasis). Essentially, the camera captures an image that contains some sort of illusion, in Branigan’s example an illusion of depth, and “a film’s narrative aims to perpetuate this perceptual illusion manifest in each image” (Buckland 171). Photoplays use the camera to create an illusion of depth, but they take this illusion a step further. The narrative surrounding photoplays emphasizes the idea that the spectator of the photoplay is getting a view just as, if not better than, the view offered those in the house. However, when we consider the camera’s true function, this best-seat-in-the-house illusion falls apart. What we are getting as photoplay spectators is merely a different perspective.

Cameras are designed to replicate the human eye as closely as possible. Various measurements for lenses, apertures, etc. are based off the measurements observed in the human eye. While the intention is for a camera to work in the same capacity as your eye, there are certain technological limitations that make this impossible. For instance, the human eye is capable of seeing approximately 130 million pixels – vastly more than even the highest quality cameras can capture (Cicala, “Camera versus Human Eye”).

Ultimately, these means that no matter how high tech the cameras used to capture a photoplay are, they simply cannot live up to the best-seat-in-the-house illusion. Rather than the narrative of the photoplay trying to maintain this illusion, it is the narrative surrounding the photoplay that works to maintain said illusion.

This illusory play segues directly into the fourth concept of the camera. The fourth camera has to do with the spectator’s relation to the image on the screen as presented by the camera, and deals primarily with “the reality of a spectator’s viewing situation, which is controlled by perceptual law and general psychological principles”

(Branigan 77, original emphasis). Branigan ties this to Bazin’s concept of the camera and reality in cinema: “For Bazin, a camera, acted upon by reality, must react in place of an absent spectator, but only in ways that are homologous with the laws of human perception” (78). In relation to the photoplay, NT Live and their fellow producers are attempting to replicate the view from the house. Their argument that they succeed in this replication stems from "the multiple-camera set-up [that] enables the television image

[or, in this case, the photoplay image] to recreate the perceptual continuity of the theatre.

Switching from camera to camera allows the television director to replicate the effect of the theatre spectator's wandering eye" (Auslander 19). However, the very use of a camera still limits the way spectators are allowed to direct their gaze. Those of us watching a photoplay must watch the specific section of the stage, the actor, or the prop that the camera highlights. While they can attempt to replicate the wandering eye, ultimately the freedom to wander is limited even if the illusion is maintained.

Looking at this from a more scientific perspective, the eyes’ direct connection to the brain causes us to process images seen directly in front of us differently than a camera processes a scene. Despite such an incompatibility, the camera attempts to “act in the place of an absent spectator… in terms of the camera’s imitation of human perception”

(Buckland 172). The key here is imitation. The camera is never able to reproduce an image the human eye is capable of producing. Thus, it is technologically impossible for

the camera to function exactly as an eye, to capture and then project the same images we would see if we were sitting in the house of any given photoplay recording.

Of course, it is possible to argue that "the spectator's gaze is always directed in the theatre by means of focal points in the staging that are equivalent to camera views"

(Auslander 19). While these focal points exist, it is still possible for a spectator in a live audience to ignore these focal points, or at the very least bend their gaze around them for a time. In a photoplay we do not have that option. Our specatorial gaze is entirely directed by what the camera is allowed to record, and thus what is displayed in the frame.

Hans Burger addresses this very problem in relation to early television filming, which is remarkably similar to current photoplay filming techniques:

This shifting between cameras has a purpose similar to cutting in the

movies. It divides the scene into different views of the same object …

however, the effect of television cutting is quite different. Since the

cameras are placed almost in one line, and since the settings resemble bas-

reliefs more than the three-dimensional sets of the films, the possibility for

variety among the shots is strictly limited. If the angles of the cameras are

changed they run the danger of catching each other or the low-hanging

mike in their line of vision; and counter-shots are, as yet, almost

impossible because there is no background for them. Therefore, although

the television camera shifts, it does not show a new angle of the scene or

tell more about the actors. What happens is essentially the same as in the

occasional use of opera glasses in the theatre; the frame of the picture is

changed, but the angle is the same. Burger 209, original emphasis

Burger clearly understood that despite the illusion of change in the camera, an actual change never occurred. Whether we are referring to the angle of a shot or the spectator’s ability to direct their own gaze, this concept of the camera as applied to the photoplay leads to a very different assessment than when applied to the cinematic camera.

Moving on to Branigan’s sixth conception of the camera, we jump from the camera as a physical object to the camera as a metaphor. Specifically, the sixth conception relates to how the camera acts as a channel of communication between an author, here most commonly the director or narrator, and the spectator. This channel is expressed in Branigan’s communication theory of narrative: “an author translates knowing into telling followed by a spectator who reconverts the telling into knowing”

(81-82, original emphasis). Of course, when applied to the photoplay, the notion of

“author” becomes muddled. No longer are we dealing with a fairly straightforward director-or-narrator-as-author relationship. Rather, we are confronted by a myriad of authors: the director of the original stage play, the director of the photoplay filming, the narrator within the play, and the narrative constructed around the play. Whoever may be acting as the author in that specific moment, the outcome is still “knowledge about reality, inflected by the author’s or narrator’s view of it” (Branigan 82).

It is this inflection that is key with the photoplay. Earlier I discussed the implications of the camera as it presents a scene to a spectator. However, stepping beyond the mechanical camera we see that what is presented to a spectator in a photoplay is not a neutral view of the stage play. Rather, it is a highly subjective view, directed by a multitude of voices, each trying to single out the most important view for that play in that moment. Here:

the camera allows us to remain in (imperfect) contact with a variety of

implied authors, narrators, observers, and characters, all willing to speak

to us and provide information. Our primary task is to discover with whom

we are in contact – that is, whose ‘voice’ is being heard in the narrative

through the channel provided by the camera. (Branigan 82)

With the photoplay, there is an enormous pool from which we can draw a voice, and with subsequent viewings the voice being heard can shift and change.

Here I want to pause a moment in my evaluation of traditional “authors” and move to nontraditional voices that might be coming through in the photoplay’s camera.

Branigan tells us that “discovering the identity of a narrating agency allows a spectator to anticipate what might be learned from a source of information and to evaluate the credibility of the source” (82, emphasis mine). When working to evaluate the credibility of the sources of the voices within various mediations and remediations, it is important to consider where these medias come from. In fact, it is important to consider where media comes from, whatever the purpose of the examination. When the National Theatre first began its screenings, they were receiving modest funding from: Travelex, a London- based currency exchange company whose contributions come in the form of subsidized tickets; The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) and

Arts Council England, both of which are government or former-government charitable organizations that fund various arts endeavors. As the seasons have grown, NT Live has started searching for funds in the private sector, from a number of different companies.

For their second season of live broadcasts, the National Theatre secured funding from insurance giant Aviva. Aviva has had a number of scandals in recent years,

including underpayments due to a merger and employees selling customer information.

However, in the UK they are most notorious at the moment for being one of the insurers of the BBC from 1971-2006, during which time over 600 people have accused Jimmy

Savile of various sex crimes. In fact, “Aviva covered the broadcaster for 49% to 55% with a limit of up to £1m, which then rose to £5m” ("Sex Abuse Scandal Has Insurers

Clashing") and along with other insurers is currently waiting to hear the outcome of investigations, or to settle out of court. Aviva and these other insurers have already begun battling in the boardrooms over who owes whom how much for what assault.

I believe it is important to acknowledge the fact that these funding sources can bleed through into a photoplay. There is nothing quite as obvious as product placement yet, however, there are still commercials shown in theatres before NT Live and title cards in other photoplays that advertise for their sponsors. While said sponsors tend not to bleed into the play itself, they certainly exist in the narrative of going to the theatre constructed within the photoplay and, as such, run the risk of being one of the voices the camera channels to us.

Turning from our conceptions of the camera, I want to address the camera as it works in relation to the photoplay’s audience and their perception of the play that was filmed. As Baudry argues, “cinema is not a replication of our ordinary impressions of reality. Rather, cinema is said to deliver an impression of reality that is more-than-real”

(190). This concept ties in to the way photoplays play with the cinema of attractions, but moreover it ties into the way NT Live and other photoplay producers sell their photoplays, and the way audiences buy into that best-seat-in-the-house narrative.

In his book Shakespeare & Audience in Practice, Stephen Purcell combs through a study that compares NT Live audiences to National Theatre patrons:

The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts

(NESTA), meanwhile, has investigated the phenomenon of liveness in

relation to the National Theatre’s recent practice of broadcasting theatrical

performances live to cinemas around the world. Their research …

‘confirms the centrality of “live” for the audience experience – both in the

theatre and in cinemas’ (Bashki et al. 2010:2). Nesta’s analysis of the

responses of 1,316 cinema-goers and 1,216 theatregoers to a questionnaire

shows that 84.3% of cinema audiences either agreed or strongly agreed

with the statement, ‘I felt real excitement because I knew that the

performance was live’ (2010:9). Interestingly, the cinema audiences

showed ‘higher levels of emotional engagement with the production than

those who had experienced the play at the National Theatre’ (2010:5) –

NESTA found that 63.2% of cinema audiences claimed to have been

‘transported to another world and lost track of time’ (compared with

47.8% of theatre audiences) and that 88.2% felt themselves emotionally

moved (compared with 72.7% in the theatre). 59-60

Clearly, NESTA’s data on being transported and emotional involvement agrees with

Baudry’s assertion about the cinematic “more-than-real,” and, though photoplays are not exactly cinema, the act of filming them appears to give them that same illusion of hyper- reality.

Despite audiences’ reactions, there are also aspects of the camera that work against that hyper-liveness granted to the photoplay. One of the most insistent shooting techniques is the close-up shot. Close-ups are generally used in film to highlight a character’s emotional state and give the audience a more intimate view: “they show us the faces of things and those expressions on them which are significant” (Balász 274).

Essentially, they “show us the very instant in which the general is transformed into the particular… [they] are often dramatic revelations of what is really happening under the surface of appearances” (Balász 274). In film, the close-up plays the very specific role of guiding the audience’s attentions. However, when it comes to live performance, given the natural distance between the actors on stage and the audience in the house, no one attending a live performance would ever see in close-up. In cinema, if the close-up is neglected, “a characteristic detail will be missed” (Pudovkin 8). In live theatre, the audience understands that a detail might be missed, as that is one of the risks of attending live performance. In fact, the close-up is almost unnecessary to guide the theatre audience’s attentions – the performance is constructed to do that on its own.

Thus, the use of the camera in shot construction has to be left to the individual photoplay and the crew filming it. We must consider not only if close-ups are used but also how they are used. Furthermore, how does the camera present additional shots? Even in medium shots large portions of the stage are lost. The camera is entirely focused on the action taking place, making it impossible to survey the entire stage at any given point.

Moreover, actors other than the one currently speaking tend to be left out of the shot.

Most reactions must be imagined, or if deemed important enough are cut to in a different camera angle during the editing process. For those who “[desire] the totality of the image,

of the visible and its meaning” (Levi 144), this method of framing with the camera removes any hint of totality. What we are left with may be “the hidden life of little things” (Balász 273), but when we are told that a photoplay is almost the same as being in the house at a live performance, it simply reinforces the camera as an intermediary.

The one aspect of the camera I have yet to address is its effect on the actor being filmed on stage. Acting for the stage and acting for the camera are two very different methods. Films tend to “emphasize acting and character, often at the expense of forms and language… Unlike the stage actor, the film actor cannot get over the footlights”

(Braudy 430). Performances are bound to be perceived differently when live as opposed to filmed. Those that excelled on stage fall flat on camera, while the opposite may be true for those who are most familiar with film and television. In fact, a number of the actors in

NT Live photoplays are better known for their film roles, including Tom Hiddleston,

Helen Mirren, and James Franco. While I will address this phenomenon in depth later, more of the lead roles in NT Live photoplays are going to film actors than they did in earlier seasons. These actors were and are clearly aware of the camera and careful to play themselves toward it without losing the audience in the house. The performances of actors who spend most of their time on stages, while neither inherently better nor worse than any other, lack the same deference to the camera. The fact is that these actors are simply not as familiar with camera work as the others. In this way, the camera interprets the performance for us, enabling certain actors to shine while others fade into the background.

Ultimately, we can see that the camera has some sort of qualitative effect on the photoplay. Whether we are talking about the camera as a machine, a channel for

communication, or as a mechanism that grants some kind of magic to what is filmed, it is clear that the camera, spectator, and the entire network of the apparatus leave a distinct mark on the photoplay. However, this mark only becomes clear once we readjust our thinking and look at the photoplay as a remediation of a live performance, rather than as a film, with all that entails especially in regards to the filming process itself. Thus, we see one of the key differences between the photoplay, and a play that has been reworked into a film.

The Suture and the Cut: Editing the Live

Vsevolod Pudovkin described editing as “one of the most significant instruments of effect possessed by the film technician” (7). He further explains editing as the way to construct a cohesive view for the spectator:

Its object is the showing of the development of the scene in relief, as it

were, by guiding the attention of the spectator now to one, now to the

other separate element. The lens of the camera replaces the eye of the

observer, and the changes of angle of the camera – directed now on one

person, now on another, now on one detail, now on another – must be

subject to the same conditions as those of the eyes of the observer. The

film technician, in order to secure the greatest clarity, emphasis, and

vividness, shoots the scene in separate pieces and, joining them and

showing them, directs the attention of the spectator to the separate

elements, compelling him to see as the attentive observer saw … editing is

not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a

method that controls the ‘psychological guidance’ of the spectator.

Pudovkin 8-11

However, as I have discussed previously, during a live performance the audience has the freedom to look at whatever or to whomever they so choose, regardless of importance to the scene currently unfolding. Editing the photoplay inserts a typically cinematic construction – a “psychological guidance” – into the live performance, and what was once a seamless live performance has now become a patchwork of shots, reverse shots, close-ups, and establishing shots.

The thread suturing this patchwork of shots is the jump cut. The cut is both crevice and stitch, presence and absence; “it is where the filmmaker and the spectator reside” (Levi 159). Of course, in evoking the suture metaphor I am bringing in the concept of suture theory, a widely-regarded cinematic theory. In the cinema, suture

creates a temporary impression of coherence and unity in the subject. The

spectator is represented in filmic discourse via an abstract universal

subject position, an empty position formally inscribed in the film that each

spectator comes to occupy. When a spectator does successfully occupy

this subject position, he or she is sutured into the film, creating an

impression of coherence. (Buckland 152)

Thus, the suture emphasizes a connection between the film and the spectator, one that creates a cohesive diegesis. However, as I have argued previously, the photoplay does not offer us the traditional cinematic diegesis. Rather, it offers us the inner narrative of the play being filmed, and the outer narrative of attending the theatre. Thus, our traditional understanding of the suture might not be appropriate for the photoplay.

In order to understand how the photoplayic suture differs from the cinematic suture, we must have a firm understanding of the cinematic suture. Buckland describes the cinematic suture:

When the spectator perceives the frame, he or she experiences the

emptiness of the formal subject and his or her split from it. At that

moment, the spectator is no longer sutured into the film. The film then

works (typically via a new shot) to re-suture the spectator back into the

subject position by trying to eliminate what Oudart calls the Absent One,

the gap that opens up between the spectator and the image. (Buckland

152)

Essentially, the suture is the joining of two shots, generally by a jump cut, in order to allow the spectator easier access into the diegesis of the film.

However, I argue that, in relation to the photoplay, the suture actually functions in the opposite way it functions in cinema. Because of our understanding of the onstage performance as live, any cut actually removes us from the performance we are watching, and thus unsutures us from the photoplay. Of course, I am not arguing that we abandon the use of the cut in the photoplay. What I am arguing is that we need to be aware of the way in which the cut affects our understanding of the live and the filmed in the photoplay.

The act of cutting from camera angle to camera angle greatly limits the way in which the cinematic audience sees the live performance: “the eye cannot discern the succession of the sequence of details in any other order than that established by him who determines the order of the montage” (Levi 139). Cutting quite literally guides our

perception of the play within the photoplay. Beyond medium-shots limiting the audience’s access to the stage, cutting from one angle to another layers on another limitation. As Pavle Levi summarizes:

There is something inherently equivocal about the cinematic cut. It brings

two shots together while setting them apart. It plays an important role in

the constitution of the film’s meaning, but can also function as its limit –

as a trace of the failure of discursive and perceptual totalization. The cut

simultaneously conceals and asserts the space, the crevice, that figures

between images. (143)

These crevices between images are capable of knitting together audience and narrative world, as in the suture, and at their best use disappear from the conscious mind of the audience. The intent is that “the shifting point of view encourages us… to be drawn into the film and to identify with the main character” (Bolter and Grusin 150). However, when the audience is expecting to witness a “live” performance, the “spatiotemporal caesura”

(Levi 146) of the jump cut jolts the viewer from the live performance and back into the cinema. This sudden reversal has the effect of shattering any semblance of life still in the performance. The job of the audience is to now work their way back to “live” until the next cut interrupts the illusion and forces them to begin the work all over again.

Clearly, the suture and the cut are complex theoretical frameworks when it comes to the photoplay. Rather than operating as we traditionally see them in cinema, they tend to have the exact opposite effect in the photoplay. Ultimately, this means we must begin to reframe our concepts of suture and cut in order to fully comprehend the ways in which live performance and mediatization meet in the photoplay.

Theorizing the Photoplay

What all of my arguments have led to is a theoretical framework for the photoplay, one that hopefully offers consideration of a broad enough spectrum to open up the framework for others to work with. Our conceptions of the live and the mediatized are affected by all of the various concepts I have listed and considered, leading to the understanding that the photoplay is, essentially, an entirely new theoretical genre. Both the traditional concept of the live and the cinematic leave us with gaps in our understanding. It is only by synthesizing the two and realizing that their relationship is still evolving that we can begin to appropriately conceptualize the photoplay of today.

As I have reiterated throughout my argument, the photoplay is not a stagnant concept. Photoplays are becoming more and more prevalent and, just as cinema evolved with the increase in films being produced, the photoplay is likely to do the same.

However, this theoretical framework is not the only part of the photoplay we need to address. In the next section of my thesis, I begin to apply the same process on a cultural level, examining the current place of the photoplay, the trends the photoplay has introduced, and how the photoplay is interacting with non-cinematic technology, like the

Internet. I hope the combination of these two frameworks – theoretical and cultural – will create a more complete understanding of the photoplay.

Audience, Accessibility, and Creativity: The Good, the Bad, and the Illegal

“Because the ideas which have always sat at the heart of the stories you’ve

told and the content you’ve sold … whether movies or music or television

… are no longer just intellectual property, they’re emotional capital.” –

Stephen J. Heyer

When trying to build a theoretical framework around the photoplay, it is just at important to consider the audience watching these photoplays as it is to consider the photoplays themselves. The photoplay has the unique ability to broaden the audience that sees a play beyond those who are physically and financially capable of attending the theatre. In my analysis of this new audience, I will first examine the implications of photoplay accessibility. Specifically, I will address the way photoplays allow Internet fandom to “invade” what has been considered a traditionally off-limits, or even sacred, site – the theatre.

Of course, with an audience that traditionally gathers and reflects online comes a whole new mode of thinking about the audience of photoplays. The fandom that has built up around photoplays, and even theatre in general, tends to be more creative in the way it responds to a given production, creating their own responses in fanfiction, fanmixes, and fanart. However, Internet fandom is not always a place of bright cheery interactions and creative expression. Sometimes it can veer towards the dark, the judgmental, and even the illegal. Of course, when I refer to the illegal, I refer to Internet piracy. While Internet piracy is a common enough phenomenon in the film, television, and music worlds, it is an entirely new concept in the theatrical realm as bootleg recordings are on a vastly different technological level compared to photoplays. And while institutions like the Motion

Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America

(RIAA) have worked to combat piracy in their own industries, regardless of one’s view of them and their efforts, nothing like these institutions exists in the theatrical realm. In examining the ways individual photoplay producers respond to Internet piracy, I will highlight the National Theatre and The Globe, which have had opposite reactions to piracy. Ultimately I will meditate on the ways in which the increase in photoplay production will continue to influence live theatre and audiences, both with regards to cultural and legal evolution.

Characterizing the Audience

In considering this new and ever-widening audience, it is important to remember

Steven Purcell’s words of warning:

any discussion of ‘the audience’ as a collective risks writing out the

various different responses at play within that audience. But at the same

time, every audience does have a collective identity of sorts: when a large

number of people respond en masse by laughing, applauding or even

falling silent simultaneously, they temporarily enact a group identity,

however tenuous and unstable it may be. (13, original emphasis)

I hesitate to refer to the photoplay audience as a collective, as there is certainly no singular identity that is able to encompass the thousands of people who attend screenings of any given photoplay. And, interestingly enough, there appears to be an audience identity formed between the audience in the photoplay and the audience of the photoplay.

When I saw Coriolanus, the audience with me drew reactions from the audience on

screen, which offers a fascinating new relationship between the audience-that-was and the audience-that-is.

That being said, there is a specific section of the newly attracted photoplay audiences I wish to consider further. While it also defies singular categorization, this section does possess traits which set it apart from traditional theatre audiences, and even the traditional theatre audience that has shifted to primarily viewing photoplays. Thus, while I certainly believe it is downright counterproductive to refer to the audience as a collective entity, I will endeavor to focus primarily on the traits I wish to examine.

Whenever I refer to the audience as a collective, it is with the understanding that there is variation within the audience and that any generalization I make is just that, with all of the implications involved.

When I went to see the NT Live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse’s

Coriolanus, the audience was not your typical theatre audience. Rather than being mostly comprised of seniors in their Sunday best, the audience was full of 20-something

Millenials sporting shirts with ”Loki’s Army” scrawled across the front and “I believe in

Sherlock Holmes” buttons on their messenger bags debating which Hogwarts House

Coriolanus would have been sorted into. They are thrilled to see MTV’s Sexiest Man

Alive take on the role of Coriolanus. This audience is, as Henry Jenkins describes,

“where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (2). This audience is Internet-savvy Millenials tied to Internet fandoms, and they are as unpredictable as it gets, forming strong connections with one piece of media and rejecting another purely on emotional terms. Jenkins continues:

Convergence requires media companies to rethink old associations about

what it means to consume media, assumptions that shape both

programming and marketing decisions. If old consumers were assumed to

be passive, the new consumers are active. If old consumers were

predictable and stayed where you told them to stay, then new consumers

are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old

consumers were isolated individuals, the new consumers are more socially

connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible,

the new consumers are now noisy and public. (18-19)

While Jenkins is referring to consumers of generic media, which does not normally encompass theatre, his assessment still rings true for theatre audiences. The question becomes, why this sudden shift in theatre audiences, and what does this mean for both traditional theatre and photoplays? Of course, ther are almost and many answers as there are new audience members. I, however, focus on two: casting and piracy.

Casting and Internet Fandoms

The first and most obvious reason for this shift in audiences lies in the casting choices made by the production, which can be generalized to the casting choices of various other photoplays. Tom Hiddleston is best known as the villainous Loki in the

Marvel Cinematic Universe. Mark Gatiss is Mycroft Holmes on the immensely popular

BBC Sherlock series. Alfie Enoch is easily recognizable as Dean Thomas from the Harry

Potter series – a role we watched him grow up in – and as Wes Gibbins from the immensely popular How to Get Away with Murder. Each of these actors brings with them

a ravenous fanbase who are now willing to give Shakespeare a try because they want to be able to say they’ve seen everything Tom Hiddleston has ever starred in. Areas that were once deemed separate – “high” and “low” culture, represented by theatre and fandom – are now blurring into one another as the “low” culture invades the location of the “high” culture. The institution of NT Live only broadens that blurring of high and low culture, allowing these fanbases even greater access to these actors and performances.

In order to really understand the significance of this shift, however, we must grapple with the significance of fandom in relation to NT Live and its fellow photoplay producers. Despite the perception of fandom as “low culture,” I would argue that, especially in the case of theatre and Shakespeare, the exact opposite is true. Helen

Freshwater hypothesizes that “perhaps a residual distrust of the mass and a lack of respect for the intellectual and interpretive capacities of ‘ordinary’ theatre-goers might explain why scholars continue to cite the opinions and reactions of published reviewers rather than asking audience members what they think” (37). However, fans within these groups devote themselves with a tenacity that can only be compared to that of academia, both with regards to desire to see as broad a range of performances as humanly possible and desire to intellectually engage with these productions and photoplays.

There is a tumblr masterpost of full musicals you can find on youtube, which contains everything from authorized recordings to bootlegs made with hand-held camcorders. Fans are willing to risk legal action in order to share the experiences of seeing a given production, as accessibility is a huge problem given both ticket prices and touring frequency. Tumblr user fuckyeahgreatplay’s list “What I’ve Seen: 2014” consists of over 70 plays and musicals she has seen in just this past year. As someone who works

in theatre in New York City, she has a much greater opportunity to go see plays and musicals than most people in the theatre fandom. In fact, for many people, photoplays are the only way they will be able to see these plays, let alone these specific productions.

Surprisingly, the Shakespeare fandom is aware of its connection with academia.

There are a number of posts along the lines of tumblr user afewreelthoughts’ post: “The best part about shipping [the desire for two characters to enter into or remain in a romantic relationship] Shakespeare characters is that, somewhere out there, there is a published scholar who agrees with you.” Furthermore, this fandom does not just make silly jokes about Shakespeare’s plays. As Purcell argues, this is “an audience who are willing to question the ethics of their own role in the theatrical exchange” (4). These fans are active interrogators of both the source text and performances. Speaking about the text of Romeo and Juliet, tumblr user nicecourfeyrack posted:

i think a lot of people are just mad disillusioned about it and i think a lot of

that comes from its being kind of packaged as “the greatest love story ever

told” when it’s not even really so much about love as it is about the

passion of young people and the ways in which they struggle with the

stricture of their elders and the disconnect that exists between parents and

their children and it also says a lot about how it isn’t the passion or the

brashness of teenagers that causes all this destruction most of the time, it’s

the parents, it’s the parents’ stupid fucking petty drama that ruins

everything and honestly if you really look at it the parents are fighting for

less than romeo and juliet are, we don’t even know how the feud between

the capulets and the montagues started, but they see this feud as more

important than cultivating relationships with their children

honestly it’s a play about adults thinking that they’re so much less swayed

by their passions because they’re older and wiser when really they’re just

as stupid if not stupider than their kids because they’d rather perpetuate a

pointless feud because it feels good to be angry than open their eyes, see

the stupidity of their situation, and pay attention to their fucking kids

(original emphasis)

Thinking about staging a production of Othello, tumblr user kelseyridge13 proposes:

I’d like to see a production of Othello that gender-swaps Othello and Iago

but not Roderigo or Cassio. Leave in the implications that Desdemona

had entertained courtship from men before falling in love with

Othello. Let’s use Shakespeare to interrogate the elements of lesbian

culture that have distaste for bisexual women and non-gold-star

lesbians. Let’s put those suspicions at the crux of the drama.

Tumblr user jerusalemsunrise responds to the Globe’s Globe-to-Globe Hamlet with:

Here’s the thing, it’s not that productions like the current Globe Hamlet

don’t matter. They do. It’s a world tour production and a butt load of

people are going to get to see this. But filmed Hamlets are super,

super important because they’re the productions we choose to make

permanent. They’re the productions that are studied and revered by future

generations. It’s the role that’s frequently used to display the “actors of

our generation” and we continually leave out actors of color from even

entering that arena. I mean, Richard Burton’s Hamlet is fantastic, but can

you imagine Sidney Poitier in the role?

And that’s what I’m really talking about when I get upset about all the

white Hamlets in high profile productions. I mean, I think about what

Hamlet my kids will be watching in school. It’ll probably be David

Tennant. And while I fucking loved his Hamlet, I would also really love

my hypothetical children and future generations to be able to watch

someone like Naeem Hayat, Lad Emeruwa, Riz Ahmed, Michael B.

Jordan, or Chiwetel Ejiofor as Hamlet. Look, I know this is indicative of a

larger culture of racism and not just the world of Shakespeare, but that still

doesn’t mean it’s okay and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing

everything in our power to make it better. (original emphasis)

These fans are not passive consumers of texts or productions. They are active participants. They are spectators who realize the problematic aspects of productions that are currently being shown world-wide. Most of all they are aware of the social implications of theatre. Productions and photoplays are not static. They actively shape our ideas of the source text and of the world around us. As such, these productions and photoplays must be interrogated, must be brought into the conversation.

Referring back to the idea that productions and photoplays shape our ideas of the source text, I must meditate for a moment on fan-made content. Specifically, things like fanfiction, fanmixes, fanart, fan-made graphics and gif, jokes, and headcanons that circulate these fandoms and sometimes break out into the Internet at large. Fanfiction, fanmixes, and fanart are all exactly what they sound like – fiction, digital mixtapes, and

original art made by fans. Fan-made graphics and gifs, however, use images and video from the content itself. Graphics are usually an artistic reinterpretation of the source material, and sometimes only use pieces of images, as below in figure 1. Gifs on the other hand are moving sequences, usually highlighting an especially poignant or funny moment from the material. Both gifs and graphics can be compiled into what is called a

“photoset.” Photosets allow multiple images and gifs to be placed side-by-side in a specified order. The most common usage of these photosets, in relation to theatre, is the fancast – a fan’s ideal casting of a given play or musical. A headcanon usually addresses something not addressed within the “canon” – the original, unedited work. For example, a well-regarded headcanon for the Harry Potter series is that Charlie Weasley is asexual. In both the books and movies he is never shown with a partner, and displays an extreme fondness for his work with dragons. Thus, a large portion of the Harry Potter fandom has the headcanon that he identifies as asexual. Clearly, fan-made content is a large portion of what occurs in Internet fandom, especially in the Shakespeare fandom, and the theatre fandom at large. The multiplicity of interpretations means there is an almost unlimited amount of fan-made content.

(fig. 1, a graphic made using stills from The Globe On Screen’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a line from the play)

Fan-made content ties directly into Purcell’s research into I, Malvolio audiences:

Seven respondents identified Malvolio as a “tramp” (initially, at least)

while another student projected her own ending onto the play, in which

Olivia secretly loved Malvolio in return. It may be unfair to call these

‘misreadings’ … Rather, it may be that these particular audience members

embody what Jacques Rancière’s ‘emancipated spectator’: ‘He makes his

poem with the poem that is performed in front of him. She participates in

the performance if she is able to tell her own story about the story that is in

front of her’ (20)

Indeed, Purcell’s assessment that “misreading” is too harsh a characterization of these alterations and additions is entirely accurate, especially when it comes to fan-made content. By creating their own interpretations and new worlds in which to place these well-known characters, fan-made content creators are essentially asking themselves

“What would happen if…” and saying “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” However, Jacques

Rancière’s “emancipated spectator” does not quite encapsulate the reactionary nature of fan-made content. The emancipated spectator still seems to exist within the confines of the performance or the work they are interacting with. What I have decided to term

“piggyback creators” tend to break away from the work and create an entirely new piece, whether that new piece be a joke or fanfiction or another theatre production. While this new piece is, of course, not independent of the work it comes from, there is still a distance between the two.

Of course, not being able to exist separately from the production, film, or photoplay that inspired their work, piggyback creators certainly crossover into my previous discussions of casting choices. Take, as an example of one of those break-out contents I referred to, tumblr user renkris’ take on Dogberry’s infamous speech from

Much Ado About Nothing: “Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are a superstitious and cowardly lot; sixth and lastly, I am vengeance; thirdly, I am the night; and, to conclude, I am Batman,” followed by fig. 2.

(fig. 2)

While this is clearly referencing Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Much Ado and the fact that Michael Keaton also played Batman, the same basic idea follows in fandom: once a famous actor has played a role in a well-known production of a

Shakespeare play, they are forever tied to the role in the fandom’s mind. Indeed, these collusions between actor and character are much like Susan Bennett’s frames, summarized by Purcell as “two ‘frames’ which condition that reading: on the one hand, an ‘outer frame’ which compromises the wider cultural constructions of the theatre event, and on the other, an ‘inner frame’ which ‘contains the dramatic production in a particular playing space’” (33). The “outer frame” is the role itself, in this instance Dogberry in

Much Ado About Nothing. The “inner frame” is Michael Keaton as Dogberry in Much

Ado About Nothing. As the number of (fandom) famous actors who have played a role increases, the more actor-frames arise. Fandoms tend to form camps around said actor- frames, and clashes between these camps occur once two well-known productions are pitted against one another. Of course, these camps are not limited exclusively to actors.

These frames and camps arise around interpretations, and all that these interpretations entail, including actors, directors, and choices specific to the given production.

Continuing the Much Ado discussion, once Joss Whedon released his film version of the play, two groups of fans were created: the Branagh camp and the Whedonites, a fandom name for Joss Whedon fans. Few in the Shakespeare fandom remained neutral, and the divide could be clearly seen between those who appreciate Branagh’s traditional approach and those who favor Whedon’s more modern take. These camps and frames can also be understood in terms of “preferred readings:”

media texts are encoded with ‘preferred’ readings, usually corresponding

with the values of the culture’s dominant ideology, but that spectators do

not always interpret the text along these lines: some will accept the

‘dominant’ reading; others will reject it entirely, resulting in an

‘oppositional’ reading; a third group, meanwhile, will combine dominant

and oppositional elements to arrive at a ‘negotiated’ reading. Purcell 34

Whatever the justifications, and whatever reading or camp fans fall into, at the base of people’s opinions was an emotional tie to one or the other of these productions. When it comes to fandom throwing their weight behind one production over another, there is an emotional connection that cannot be explained away, and this emotional connection is key to more than just popularity.

With reference to photoplays, that emotional connection specifically happened with the Donmar Warehouse’s Coriolanus in Tom Hiddleston and Hadley Fraser. Once audiences saw the now infamous kiss the two shared as Coriolanus and Aufidius, the two actors became forever associated with their respective character. If you look at the

“Coriolanus – Shakespeare” tag on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a popular site for posting fanfiction, there are 64 results, must of which were posted after October 2013. The date is

significant because it is when the complete cast for the Donmar’s Coriolanus was announced, and fans were finally able to put actors’ faces to characters’ names. It is no coincidence that most of these fanfictions describe Tom Hiddleston and Hadley Fraser when describing Coriolanus and Aufidius, nor that the fanfictions posted after the NT

Live’s broadcast describe Coriolanus’ death as it was shown in the Donmar’s production.

Furthermore, the website 8tracks allows users to upload playlists. Tagging these playlists allows the creators to organize them by subject, and also add cover art. The Coriolanus tag currently has 29 playlists, most of them having to do with the Coriolanus/Aufidius pairing. Almost every single one of them has a still from the Donmar’s production as its cover art (figs. 2 and 3).

(fig. 2) (fig. 3)

In coopting these actors’ faces as stand-ins for the characters, both verbally and visually, fandom is essentially saying they have the power to determine what is and is not accepted as canon by exercising their creative capacity. In this sense, fandom is exerting its right over the rights of the creators of these productions and photoplays to say what they want to see, and what they want to see is Tom Hiddleston and Hadley Fraser playing out sexually charged scenes as Coriolanus and Aufidius. They would not have had the

same reaction to two other actors because of the emotional connection they have already established with these two – Hiddleston mainly from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and

Fraser from previous musical theatre roles. What this inexplicable emotional connection translates to, for producers of photoplays, is profits.

While numbers for individual productions are unavailable, I believe the uptick in the number of plays in each NT Live season with fandom-famous actors and actresses speaks for itself: fandom is where the profit lies. The first season of NT Live included

Helen Mirren’s Phedre. As the seasons progress, more and more fandom-famous actors and actresses begin to take on roles. In the fifth season, during which the National

Theatre celebrated its 50th anniversary, they rebroadcast Frankenstein with Benedict

Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, broadcast Coriolanus, King Lear (starring Simon

Russell Beale, known by his association with Tom Hiddleston in The Hollow Crown’s

Henry IV Parts I and II and Penny Dreadful, and directed by Sam Mendes, known for

Skyfall), and Skylight (starring Bill Nighy, who has appeared in Doctor Who and The

Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and Carey Mulligan, also from Doctor Who and The

Great Gatsby), which was so successful it contributed to the production’s transfer to

Broadway. Their sixth season began with Medea (starring Helen McCrory, known as

Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) and A Streetcar Named Desire (starring

Gillian Anderson of The X-Files and Hannibal). It continued with Of Mice and Men

(starring James Franco of Freaks and Geeks and the original Spiderman trilogy, and

Chris O’Dowd of The IT Crowd and Girls) and Man and Superman (starring Ralph

Fiennes known for the Harry Potter films and Skyfall). I list off all of these actors, films,

and shows to illustrate the fact that as the seasons have progressed, NT Live has turned to more actors and even directors with fandom ties.

While there are many different reasons an actor may be cast, it is important to acknowledge that the decision to turn the production into a photoplay is driven by what every decision in big-name theatre comes down to: money. These actors are the ones who bring in large crowds during NT Live screenings because they are the ones fandoms know and have formed attachments to, and are therefore more willing to pay to go see.

Additionally, “spectators who had been attracted by the play or the writer responded much less positively (56% approval) than those who had been attracted by the presence of particular famous actors (81% approval)” (Purcell 149). Of course, Purcell is referring specifically to numbers from surveys of those who attended Josie Rourke’s Hamlet starring David Tennant, but research of various internet review sites and fan reactions shows the same basic reactions, and this leads us to a universal truth: happy patrons are patrons who return and spend their money.

This process of casting is symptomatic of what Henry Jenkins described as convergence – “a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (3). Fans of these actors and their previous work are making connections between actors and photoplays. It does not matter if the audience member has never seen A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando, what matters is that they want to see it now because Gillian Anderson is starring in it.

One of the most interesting aspects of the theatre fandom, and especially the

Shakespeare fandom, is that they are excluded from a number of the traditional fandom activities because of their age. The most notable of these activities is spoiling. It is more

or less impossible to spoil a play that is 400 years old and has a history of performance stretching back that far. Plays like Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing have so pervaded our culture that you know the story before you read the play in high school

English class, even if you do not know the specifics. If you dig back in the archives of the

Coriolanus tag on tumblr, the text “Spoiler Alert” precedes most of the posts talking about reactions to the Donmar’s production. These fans are not concerned about spoiling the plot; rather they are concerned about spoiling performance details. Some of these reviews are even marked as not containing spoilers because they avoid any specifics about the production. In coopting these productions, and especially photoplays as they are more readily and widely available, these fandoms have constructed a thriving community that is markedly different and yet shockingly similar to the fandoms of modern pop culture.

Of course, all of this does not mean the National Theatre is losing its traditional audience. “Cinema did not kill theater” (Jenkins 14), and neither will photoplays. As

Jenkins argues, “each old medium was forced to coexist with emerging media… Old media are not being replaced. Rather, their functions and status are shifted by the introduction of new technologies” (14). Traditional theatre will continue alongside photoplays, and this extends to their respective audiences. The National Theatre has not seen a decrease in audience sizes at their traditional theatre performances, and in fact, are experiencing quite the opposite. Their 2013/2014 season saw a record £99.9 million income (Quinn “National Theatre Generates Record £100m Income”). Clearly the

National Theatre is suffering no financial loss due to the shift in audiences at their

photoplays. Going forward, however, it will be interesting to see the ways casting fandom famous actors affects live ticket sales as well as photoplay attendance.

Here There Be Pirates

As I have previously illustrated, the accessibility that photoplays allow offers an incredible chance to expand theatre audiences. Whether we are talking across class boundaries or across physical oceans, the photoplay has drastically changed the landscape of theatrical audience. Arguably, photoplay producers have gone from international names to international theatres. However, despite the inklings of a golden age of theatre accessibility, there is a dark side to the proliferation of photoplays, especially once you bring in fandom famous actors with hordes of Internet-savvy fans.

Internet piracy is easier and more accessible than ever, in this age of torrenting and peer-to-peer (p2p) content. Piracy first became a major issue with photoplays when

NT Live broadcast Frankenstein. Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch, who was at that time most well known for the BBC’s Sherlock, brought hand-held recording devices into cinemas with them. They would film the broadcast as best they could, then upload it to the Internet so others could watch it. The National Theatre cracked down on these pirates, removing the recordings when they found them. At this point, it “seemed [NT Live] was at war with its consumers” (Jenkins 8). The problem was, however, that it is impossible to remove information once it is out there on the Internet. A well-conducted search at thepiratebay.se – one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet – still yields recordings of both casts.

In an attempt to curb any further attempts at piracy, David Sabel, Head of Digital

Media and Producer of NT Live, released a blog post that said, “We [NT Live] do not in any way condone the piracy of recording, both because it is an illegal activity and because it is against the wishes of the artists whose work we represent. I would let you know that if you choose to record, distribute, or download the screening of Frankenstein, you are breaking the law and risk legal action.” The National Theatre tended to avoid legal action as most of those possessing these recordings were teenagers. However, as

Henry Jenkins warns, “No one group can set the terms. No one group can control access and participation” (23). Any action made by photoplay producers to control piracy is going to evoke an equal reaction, and if they should attempt to reach into the realm of piggyback creators they run the risk of following in the footsteps of those in the entertainment industry who have not just tried to protect their own property, but who have in the process quashed attempts to build on what they originally put forth.

What the National Theatre did not, and perhaps could not, predict was the incredible rate at which technology would advance. Companies have been described as

“content with staying afloat” (Jenkins 7) on the sea of technological change, but NT Live has found itself in the midst of a tempest, and only their reaction will tell whether or not they survive. Patrick von Sychowski’s article, “We Need to Talk About Event Cinema

Piracy,” reveals just how easy it is to access illegal recordings of NT Live photoplays and how much the quality of these recordings has changed:

NT Live and most other event cinema screenings go out ‘in the clear’,

meaning that they are not encrypted…To tap into the satellite stream is not

difficult. All you need is a motorized satellite dish with a controller, a

high-definition receiver and a DVR or PC to record the data onto. The

time and date of the NT Live events are helpfully provided on the website

(the clue is in the word ‘live’), while a quick Google search will tell you

which satellite and frequency is being used. For NT Live Hamlet last

October, for example, it was transmitted on 1.0W, Intelsat 10-02 on the

frequency 11473.

In other words, pirates can now intercept the satellite transmission of the live simulcasts and download the high definition recording that is being sent out. The equipment can be bought at a local electronics store without much effort, or ordered online with even less effort. These files can then be uploaded to file-sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay and distributed. Searching “NT Live” on The Pirate Bay yielded seven different results, including War Horse and the 50th anniversary special. Clearly the strongly worded request that people not record their recordings has fallen on deaf ears – people want to see these photoplays and will use whatever means to get them.

Before we begin addressing more specific actions and reactions, it is important to set forth a few concepts that go hand in hand with piracy. In his book Free Culture: The

Nature and Future of Creativity, Lawrence Lessig explains that our concept of “free culture” is not necessarily the kind of “free” we generally think of:

we come from a tradition of ‘free culture’ – not ‘free’ as in ‘free beer’ (to

borrow a phrase from the founder of the free-software movement), but

‘free’ as in ‘free speech,’ ‘free markets,’ ‘free trade,’ ‘free enterprise,’

‘free will,’ and ‘free elections.’ A free culture supports and protects

creators and innovators … by limiting the reach of [intellectual property]

rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free

as possible from the control of the past (xiv, original emphasis)

One thing we must understand, however, is that intellectual property rights are no longer concentrated in the hand of the artist or creator. Essentially, the law now works to concentrate power within a very limited number of corporations and creators, which further restricts piggyback creators. Occasionally, the work of a piggyback creator will break through into the mainstream. One of the best-selling book series of all time, Fifty

Shades of Grey, was initially a Twilight fanfiction that gained a massive cult following.

Once the books were published, the names of the characters were changed and the original fanfiction was removed from official sites. Despite the publisher’s efforts, it can still be found circulating on file-sharing sites. That is one thing the National Theatre and other photoplay producers must understand: “there is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet’s effect” (Lessig xiv). Once the recordings are out there, they are out there forever, and even switching off the Internet will not stop them from spreading.

The next concept we must consider is how we are to frame photoplays in the piracy discussion. The main problem I face is that there is nothing entirely analogous to the photoplay in our current study of piracy. That being said, they seem to most closely resemble a filmic discourse. Of course, this depends entirely on what kind of photoplay piracy we are addressing, which I discuss in greater detail below. Furthermore, this problem of framing the photoplay then leads to the question of how are we to frame the piggyback creators who base their work off of the photoplay. When someone samples an artist’s song without their permission and puts it into another song, the copyright infringement is fairly cut-and-dry. That is not the case when we look at piggyback

creators who use images from photoplays in their graphics, or base their fanfiction off a specific performance. Thus, we have to first frame photoplays and then move on to piggyback creators.

In answer to the initial problem of how to frame photoplay piracy, I would propose two different camps of photoplay piracy, which directly relate to how photoplay producers are making their photoplays available. As Jenkins explains, “media producers are responding to… consumers in contradictory ways, sometimes encouraging change, sometimes resisting what they see as renegade behavior” (19), and I would argue that the

Globe falls into the first category, while the National Theatre falls into the latter. While the National Theatre has very obviously taken the containment route by attempting to remove and discourage piracy of their photoplays, the Globe has taken the exact opposite approach: proliferation. While NT Live’s productions are not available on DVD or through any other means but piracy, the Globe has released every production that was part of their Globe on Screen series on DVD. Furthermore, they recently opened the website Globe Player at globeplayer.tv. Here audiences can digitally rent or purchase

Globe on Screen productions, as well as other recordings that were previously unreleased.

With prices at £2.99-£5.99 to rent and £4.99-£9.99 to own, it is easy to support a theatre company that is making its productions as accessible as humanly possible while still turning a profit. The same cannot be said of the National Theatre.

Here is where the two different types of piracy enter into the picture. Pirating the

Globe’s photoplays is what Lessig has labeled “type A” piracy: “there are some of us who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content” (68). This type A piracy is clearly illegal, but it is hard to determine how economically harmful it is, mainly

because we can’t determine if “everyone who takes [the copyrighted material] would actually have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free” (68). Since the

Globe’s productions are not just available at screenings, but also digitally and on DVD, there are other legal avenues to obtain these productions. Here, we see an almost perfect analogy to film piracy, mainly in that the same methods and justifications arise.

The second type of photoplay piracy is closer to what Lessig described as “type

C” piracy, where people use piracy “to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold” (68). He goes on to explain that “for content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero” (68). Clearly Lessig is basing this category on the assumption that the content was once available for sale. However, this is not technically the case when it comes to NT Live’s photoplays. While tickets were sold to screenings, the photoplays themselves were never technically available for purchase, with the exception of their 50th anniversary celebration. Once a photoplay has been screened, with the exception of a couple of incredibly popular NT Live productions that have had encore screenings, it disappears from the market. The only way to gain access to them is by having a connection with a cinema or theatre company that offered screenings, or by pirating a recording of the original simulcast.

Now, this is the more philosophically taxing form of piracy. Technically, it is illegal to download the copyrighted NT Live photoplay. However, as Lessig tells us, it is arguably “good for society (since more exposure to [theatre] is good) and harmless to the artist (since the work is not otherwise available)” (69). As the National Theatre is not making their content available, the moral and economic issues behind pirating their

photoplays become nonissues. Furthermore, “the vast majority of [copyrighted material] is made unavailable solely because the publisher or the distributor has decided it no longer makes economic sense to the company to make it available” (71, original emphasis). We must acknowledge that theatres, especially theatres like the National

Theatre, are business first and artistic venues second, however much they might argue otherwise. If the National Theatre is under the impression that refusing to release photoplays is the best business option, in terms of allowing them to make more money off the recording, then they will keep their photoplays under lock and key. Of course, as I have cited previously, the National Theatre likes to say their refusal is due to the request of the artists involved in these projects. However, that may or may not be the case. The

National Theatre certainly has the clout and the business acumen to ensure the outcome they want, regardless of the artists’ requests. Whatever their motivation, the fact remains that the National Theatre refuses to release their photoplays for individuals to own, and thus these individuals must turn to other, more legally questionable methods of access.

The problem of inaccessibility of content is one fandom has taken on before. In

2012, Jake Caputo started the “Take My Money, HBO!” campaign. The tagline on his website read: “We pirate Game of Thrones, we use our friend's HBOGO login to watch

True Blood…Please HBO, offer a standalone HBOGO streaming service and Take My

Money!” With Game of Thrones “accounting for a quarter of all pirated downloads from

100 torrent sites…the programme was downloaded over 1.4 million times between

January and February [2014],” (Williams, "Game of Thrones Still Most Pirated TV

Show") it is the most pirated television show of all time, and has one of the most voracious fandoms. As part of the campaign, fans tweeted how much they would be

willing to pay for a monthly subscription to HBO’s online content. Most naysayers cited the contracts HBO had with cable companies, arguing that these contracts made it fiscally unsound or physically impossible for HBO to offer subscriptions to HBOGO. However, on October 15, 2014, HBO announced that a stand-alone HBOGO would be offered to users. This service began in April 2015, alongside the latest season of Game of Thrones – definitely not a coincidence as Game of Thrones fans were some of the most vocal during the “Take my Money, HBO!” Twitter campaign (Flacy, "Standalone HBO Go

Subscriptions Start April 2015, No Cables Attached").

Since it has only recently been launched, it is impossible to say what fiscal impact this new HBOGO service will have, but it is possible to say there will be one. Hundreds of thousands of people participated in the “Take My Money!” campaign, and if even half of these participants buys in it will equal a larger profit than when all of them were pirating the episodes of their favorite shows, and the same can be said for the National

Theatre should they begin offering their photoplays as digital purchases. What all of this boils down to is the fact that the National Theatre must do something, must take some sort of stance not just in word but in deed:

Media producers will find their way through their current problems only

by renegotiating their relationship with their consumers. Audiences,

empowered by these new technologies, occupying a space at the

intersection between old and new media, are demanding the right to

participate within the culture. Producers who fail to make their peace with

this new participatory culture will face declining good will and diminished

revenues. The resulting struggles and compromises will define the public

culture of the future. (Jenkins 24)

Soon, the National Theatre’s hand will be forced because, unlike the Globe, they have not managed to get out in front of this piracy trend. The question that follows this, of course, is what should they do, and what can they do?

While there is no definite answer, and I cannot really speak from the perspective of a lawyer as I am unqualified in that field, I can propose certain ideas from a creative perspective. For one, it is important to separate piracy type A from type C, and piggyback creators or innocent viewers from malicious people trying to make money off of the reproduction of photoplays. When photoplays are unavailable through any other means, it is hard to fault people for pirating them because they want to watch or rewatch them, especially if they are using these photoplays as inspiration for their own creative work.

However, if photoplays are available, especially to the extent of the Globe’s, then every effort should be made to legally access these photoplays. The law can and should take availability through other means into account when trying to legislate both the photoplay and other kinds of media.

Regardless of what the law takes into account when legislating, ultimately it is the photoplay producers who most vocally advocate for legislation and actively pursue violators of copyright. When these violators have created some sort of work based on the photoplay, it is entirely possible to still prosecute them. In the current legislative world,

“to build upon or critique the culture around us one must ask, Oliver Twist-like, for permission first” (Lessig 10). Whether that permission is granted or not lies entirely in the hands of the corporation that owns the copyright for the material the requester wants

to use. Furthermore, this permission “is not often granted to the critical or the independent” (Lessig 10). Herein lies the reason the law needs to strike a balance between protecting photoplay producers from unlicensed reproductions attempting to make a profit and allowing piggyback creators the room to create. Without the protection against angry corporations wanting to keep their name unsullied, creators attempting to use their work as critique will be stifled. Indeed, as Lessig argues, “They [corporations] are succeeding in their plan to remake the Internet before the Internet remakes them” (9).

If we allow the law to remake the Internet and block its ability to work as a creative and critical device, we are essentially removing the “free” from our culture. Thus, we must find some sort of balance between protection and creation.

And of course, we cannot deny the fact that theatre comes from a long line of piracy. Theatres have long been a location of societal and political interrogation, critiquing and creating based upon what has come before. In fact, as I am sure we are all aware, “Acting companies perform adaptations of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission from anyone. (Does anyone believe Shakespeare would be better spread within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare rights clearinghouse that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal to first?)” (29, original emphasis). Indeed, what if productions had to be cleared before being brought to the public? Well for one, most productions that went on to be performed would fall under what we tend to think of as

“traditional” Shakespeare performances, and what room would that leave for evolution of theatrical thought? Additionally, the truly innovative productions would be put down before they began because they violate the holy idea of Shakespeare or in some other way offend our theatrical sensibilities, or, to quote Gunning, “traditions of legitimate theater”

(65). What for centuries has been a venue for societal commentary, and even change, would be nothing more than a mouthpiece for those who get to decide what Shakespeare is. And, after all, isn’t that what these piggyback creators are doing? Aren’t they rebelling against what they are told Shakespeare is? What theatre is? Aren’t they insisting on new representations and new modes of representation? Aren’t they attempting to perform what innovative theatre productions are trying to perform, just in a different medium?

This is why protecting piggyback creators is so very important, perhaps even more important in the theatrical realm than the cinematic.

Theorizing the Photoplay’s Audience

As I have illustrated throughout this section of my thesis, the photoplay is drastically changing the theatre audience. No longer are we subject to “heavy metal matinees” and “brat mats” – popular terms for matinees that attract a lot of seniors with walkers and wheelchairs, and student matinees. Audiences are taking a decidedly younger, want-to-be-here turn. At least, they are where they can relate to the production, whether that relation is to technological innovation or the emotional capital of a beloved actor or director.

Of course, as with anything, emotional attachment leads to both good things and bad. The good is the sudden influx of creativity spawned by the increasing popularity of the photoplay. This creativity could very well lead to a new golden age of theatre, in terms of sheer amount being put out. And as usual, Shakespeare is a great place to start, since there are no licensing fees or permissions to gain. On the other hand, the bad lies on the horizon. While photoplay piracy is only recently gaining traction, the companies

behind photoplays are not going to sit still and watch their profits be cut into, whether or not those profits are actually being cut into. The key here is to preserve the good while trying to eliminate the bad. As Lessig tells us, balance is key. Striking a balance between regulation and propagation means that the creative forces driving our “free” culture will be able to continue their valiant efforts.

Conclusions and Connections: The Photoplay and the Future

Photoplays offer us a rich environment in which to evaluate our concepts of live and mediatized, and to allow our idea of live theatre to evolve. Theatre is no longer only a location of liveness, rather it is a location in which liveness is complicated by mediatization, not just in discourse but in filming and in becoming its own form of media. This new media, as a subset of new media, offers us the ability to re-evaluate our notions of various theories as well as the notion of the theatre audience. In this reevaluation, we must emphasize that live theatre will endure.

The photoplay is not here to replace live theatre, just as television and cinema did not replace live theatre in the past. The question then becomes, what will the reaction of live theatre to the photoplay be? Will live theatre try to adopt various techniques and concepts from the photoplay as it did the cinema, or will it reject and try to distance itself from the photoplay? Whatever the reaction of live cinema, it is important that we as performance theorists have a grasp on the photoplay before we try to evaluate live theatre’s reaction.

As I reflect on the entirety of what I have just presented to you, I begin to see one symbol running throughout the concept of the photoplay: the frame. In order to begin theorizing the photoplay we need a framework. In order to understand how liveness and mediatization intermingle in the photoplay we need to consider the cinematic frame, applying apparatus and suture theories in new ways, tweaking them to fit a genre they were not originally intended for. In order to understand where the new audience of the photoplay is coming from, we need to understand their inner and outer frames, whether they be actor-frames or other interpretation-based frames. In order to promote the

creativity of piggyback creators we need to frame their work appropriately in relation to

Internet piracy. And in order to understand the significance of the photoplay, we need to frame the photoplay both in relation to its past – live theatre performance – and its future, whatever that may actually be.

While there is no way to truly see the future, it is easy enough to conjecture where the photoplay is leading us. As David Sobelsohn, founder of Footlights DC, a modern drama discussion group, commented during our exchanges about my subject, “Your thesis explores the cutting edge of the future of live performance. When the technology improves & makes 3D feasible without those annoying glasses, the impact will be enormous, possibly even more on what we now call "movies" than on live theater. Certainly this is the future of opera.” Carrying this beyond a 3D image on a screen, with the advancement of three-dimensional recording we may eventually see photoplays played out on actual stages, with 3D actors and sets being projected onto an analogous stage. Or perhaps the photoplay will evolve to stand as a separate entity from live theatre, with photoplays being created and recorded, but never performed live. The only way to see any of those productions will be the photoplay. Whatever the future holds, the one thing I am certain of is that the photoplay is only in its early stages of existence and offers an immense new realm of possibilities for performance. All we have to do is wait and see where this stepping-stone will take us and, in the mean time, work to understand the photoplay best we can so we are prepared to tackle the next innovation performance throws at us.

Ultimately, performance theorists must be ready to address photoplays as their own field, independent of both film and live theatre, but still acknowledging what the

photoplay owes to both. Building upon the theoretical and cultural frameworks I have offered here will allow us to follow the photoplay on its evolutionary path. Only by being aware of where the photoplay came from can we possibly be prepared for where it is going.

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