WHAT shape will post-pandemic theatre take? Everyone predicts massive change. Sir David Hare recently said the art form was in need of a ‘revolution’. Kwame KweiArmah, announcing his new season at the Young Vic, revealed plans not only to livestream all productions, but to offer online audiences a chance to choose their own angle of vision.
The general consensus is that theatre cannot simply return to its old ways. I understand that. And one thing is for sure: audiences, sustained by watching shows on their laptops, will expect that to continue. But I have a strong belief that, once people feel safe, they will be hungry to attend live events.
Every theatergoer knows that one is far more than a passive spectator: by one’s very presence, one is helping to influence what one is watching. We also don’t talk enough about the purely social aspect of theatre: the pleasure of meeting old friends, of making new ones or the vicarious joy of seeing how one’s chosen companion reacts to what one is seeing. Thackeray, a passionate playgoer, put it well in Pendennis when he wrote that ‘a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime’. You don’t get that in front of a laptop.
Denne historien er fra May 19, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 19, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
