Get Out From Behind the Proscenium Arch

Okay, I’m sure the proscenium theatre has its place, but we need to move beyond it if we want to bring our audiences back to us. That theatre audiences are in serious decline is a statistical fact. Witness the 2002-2012 National Endowment for the Arts Survey of Public Participation for the Arts which measured “…a steady decline in the rates of adult attendance at most ‘benchmark’ arts events — specifically, classical music and jazz concerts, musical and non-musical plays, opera, and ballet performances … since 1982.”

Of course, there are many factors responsible for theatre audience declines, many of them beyond our control. But many are within our power to change. In my posts, I will examine those factors we can address. I will assault them in my own order of importance – the first, and most significant, being the dreaded proscenium arch.

Developed during the Italian Renaissance to accommodate the use of perspective scenery, the proscenium theatre has become the ubiquitous form of theatrical architecture in America. It is particularly pervasive in the grade schools, universities, arts centers and community theatres through which our theatrical foundation is nurtured. In short, it is the mother’s milk of American theatrical form. Why not? It brings with it numerous advantages. Being developed to accommodate perspective, it naturally makes productions look more technically real and more easily supports spectacle. It requires fewer lighting instruments. Two dimensional sets are easier to construct. The fact that scenery only has to be painted on one side saves labor and paint. Equally, things can be easily hidden from the audience, which allows for more theatrical slight-of-hand, making surprising audiences easier and hiding flaws easier still. Flying scenery and objects can be easily stowed away, and set changes are better accommodated via the wings. The proscenium certainly makes Shakespeare’s frequent stage directions “from off” easier to execute, as does it easily accommodate the entrances and exits of performers. Lastly, it makes performers’ jobs easier – they only have to worry about addressing audience in one direction and only have to worry about what’s happening with the front of their bodies. In brief, the proscenium arch makes theatre easier. Just like McDonald’s makes food easier and “oh-so-yummy”. Oh, and it can accommodate more people too – “over ten billion served…”

The proscenium makes theatre easier for audiences as well. Rather than being active participants in the theatrical event by constantly being forced to shift focus in order to follow the story, the proscenium allows audience minds and bodies to be static as they focus on one point in space. Because the proscenium and perspective scenery support and promote realism, they also cause the audience to rely less on their “imaginary forces” (to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare) and let performers and production take care of the bulk of the creative act. Behind the proscenium, the play is an event isolated beyond an invisible “fourth wall”, allowing us, the audience, to remain in passive recline as we witness the events unfolding. Authors Patti Gillespie and Kenneth Cameron sum it up very well in their text Western Theatre: Revolution and Revival:

Withdrawal of the performance behind the proscenium had been going on for generations. In the last part of the nineteenth century, it was marked by a well-defined proscenium “picture frame”; by the disappearance of the forestage; and by the marked separation between the acting area and the auditorium. Both realism and Wagnerism encouraged these changes. Early in the period, the actors played well in front of the scenery, forging a link between the world of the audience and that of the stage. Late in the period, however, the actors retreated behind the proscenium arch and played within their scenic environment.

But, here’s the rub. The previously mentioned NEA survey offers the following prescription to heal our theatre audience woes:

… it could lie in new kinds of arts experiences and participation that are more active, that blur the line between performer and audience, that make the beholder a part of the creative process and artists the animators of community life — experiences which, for some people, hold more personal value than sitting in an audience.

Why did the survey conclude that? Because it also found (further bolstered by 2015 updated statistics) that 73% of people who attend arts events do so to socialize.

Let’s think about the social factor when confronted with the proscenium arch. Audiences are certainly not encouraged to interact (ie socialize) with the performers. In fact, the proscenium discourages such interaction and separates audience from performer. When you sit in a proscenium theatre and watch a play, what do you see of your fellow audience members? You see their backs. You don’t know if your fellows and friends are smiling, frowning, crying or sitting mutely in disgust. You are not sharing the event; you are isolated in your own quiet cubical. When you sit in an audience for theatre in the round, runway, thrust or other configurations, what do you see beyond the performers? You see your fellow audience members. You see their faces, their postures, their attitudes. You share their reactions to what is happening onstage as do they yours. The play becomes a communal experience and your reactions become shared commentary. Equally, the performers are no longer isolated behind a fourth wall, but walk among you. Solo transcendence becomes shared enlightenment.

In forms of theatre other than the proscenium, audience imagination must become universally actively engaged because so little of reality can be shown physically. As Shakespeare’s Chorus says in Henry V when apologizing for the limitations of the Elizabethan “wooden O” of a theatre:

… let us, ciphers to this great accompt,/ On your imaginary forces work… Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts…For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings…

Thus theatre becomes a social and communal act of creation, audience with performer and audience with audience. Together, they imaginatively create the environment of the play.

Let’s be real. If we crave an entertainment experience in which we sit passively in isolation, stare mutely at a frame (containing two dimensional images pretending to be three dimensional) while being minimally challenged to use our imaginations as part of a communal, creative process, then we might as well lounge comfortably at home on our sofas and watch cable or stream on a laptop. And that is exactly what our audiences are more frequently choosing to do.

I say it’s time for us theatre practitioners to make the majority of our theatrical expressions in configurations that draw people out, to us and to each other. It’s time for us (our schools, universities and community groups) to get out from behind the proscenium arch and make theatre more like the Dionysian rites from which it sprang. It’s time to make theatre social again.

Next post, I take on Realism.

Anon…

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