Swayze + Taimek?

Smokler on July 12, 2005

How in the world did I miss Road House – The Play? (via my budddy Ernie)?

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2 Replies to “Swayze + Taimek?”

  1. ed July 12, 2005 at 10:22 pm

    Don’t worry. There will be plenty more film-to-theatre adaptations.
    One of the troubling aspects with theatre (and it afflicts both San Francisco and New York) is the endless theatrical adaptation of films. Now I’ve enjoyed, for example, the Dark Room adaptations of “The Twilight Zone” (a yearly affair, if you’re curious). But this crowd-pleasing and ticket sales-generating approach disheartens me because I fear that original material — the ballsy stuff that theatre is intended to do — languishes in development because of this fixation. To the point where theatre becomes not so much about theatre, but about the theatrical equivalent of “filmed adaptations.” Where does this place tomorrow’s playwrights? How does this get the next generation of theatregoers excited about the medium? The fact that the productions opt for campy approaches also means that actors are not so much producing characters, but caricatures based on popular culture.
    Sorry to vent, but as a man writing and directing plays himself, this is a hot issue with me. I do my damnedest to be as original, challenging, respectful of the audience’s intelligence, and ambitious as possible with my work. No one is really willing to admit this, but it’s truly frustrating to know that even the small-time “indie” theatre companies offer the theatrical equivalent of television when they can, for example, take one of these themes and turn it on its head in an original piece of work. There are plenty of themes and human moments to capture on the stage. But today’s theatre is languishing so badly that they almost have to co-opt audiences with this kind of campy drivel. Because if you get a small upstep in sales, you can maybe (just maybe) get people seeing the pure stuff.

  2. ed July 12, 2005 at 10:22 pm

    Don’t worry. There will be plenty more film-to-theatre adaptations.
    One of the troubling aspects with theatre (and it afflicts both San Francisco and New York) is the endless theatrical adaptation of films. Now I’ve enjoyed, for example, the Dark Room adaptations of “The Twilight Zone” (a yearly affair, if you’re curious). But this crowd-pleasing and ticket sales-generating approach disheartens me because I fear that original material — the ballsy stuff that theatre is intended to do — languishes in development because of this fixation. To the point where theatre becomes not so much about theatre, but about the theatrical equivalent of “filmed adaptations.” Where does this place tomorrow’s playwrights? How does this get the next generation of theatregoers excited about the medium? The fact that the productions opt for campy approaches also means that actors are not so much producing characters, but caricatures based on popular culture.
    Sorry to vent, but as a man writing and directing plays himself, this is a hot issue with me. I do my damnedest to be as original, challenging, respectful of the audience’s intelligence, and ambitious as possible with my work. No one is really willing to admit this, but it’s truly frustrating to know that even the small-time “indie” theatre companies offer the theatrical equivalent of television when they can, for example, take one of these themes and turn it on its head in an original piece of work. There are plenty of themes and human moments to capture on the stage. But today’s theatre is languishing so badly that they almost have to co-opt audiences with this kind of campy drivel. Because if you get a small upstep in sales, you can maybe (just maybe) get people seeing the pure stuff.

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