Chapter Two
Stage Versus Screen
Audience: No Cell Phones, Please!
Theatre
are active
participants
 Communication flows
both ways
 a pure form of acting
because it belongs to
the actors and
audience
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
 Audiences
Audience: No Cell Phones, Please!
Film and TV
Peter Cade/Stone/Getty Images
 Audiences
are
passive
 Communication
flows in only one
direction
 Usually know in
advance what you
are getting for your
time and money
Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up
Acting in Film
Photofest
 Photographic
charisma is
important
 Often shot out of
sequence
 Memorization is
not as important
 Allowed to fail
Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up
“We’re tightrope walkers. When you walk the
wire in a movie, the wire is painted on the
floor, but when you walk it on the stage, it’s a
hundred feet high without a net.”
Al Pacino, Actor
“…acting for film is like a musician playing in
a recording studio and acting in the theatre is
like playing live in concert…”
Willem Dafoe, Actor
Acting: I’m Ready for My Close-up
Acting on the Stage
and training
are essential
 Everything is a
wide-shot
 Memorization skills
are required
 Must perform well
with each
performance
T. Charles Erickson/Courtesy Berkeley Repertory Theatre
 Talent
Directing: Direct and Indirect
Theatre
is a playwright’s
medium
 Director understands
that when the
performance begins,
the actors are in
charge
 The director tends to
work collaboratively
© Joan Marcus
 It
Directing: Direct and Indirect
Film
Photofest
 It
is a director’s
medium
 Exerts absolute
control over every
shot
 The director tends
to be solitary
authority
Funding: Follow the Money
Funding for the Screen Comes from
 Ticket sales
 DVD rentals
 Advertising
Everett Collection


Funding for Theatre
comes from
 Ticket and
concession sales
 Federal, state and
local government
grants
 Corporate funding
and private
donations
William Missouri Downs
Funding: Follow the Money
Control: Who Pulls the Strings?

Screen entertainment tends to put the
values of the audience foremost

Theatre tends to value the voice of the
artist

Bourgeois theatre and independent
filmmaking will often combine both
considerations
The Theatre Next Door
Who controls content?
• Screen entertainment
policies are dominated
by a small handful of
executives.
• Hundreds of differing
political view are
promoted by thousands
of theatres across the
US.
National Archives
•
Ownership: Copyrights and Cash

Copyright – a legal guarantee granted by the
government to creative artists that allows them to
maintain control and profit from their work

Royalty payment – fee paid to playwrights for the
rights to produce their play

Public domain – once a playwright has been dead
for 70 years, his or her plays become pubic property

Writers for hire – writers in screen entertainment
who forfeit their rights to the works they author for
a film or television program
Curtain Call

Screen entertainment tends to view their
audiences as consumers and what they do
as a product

Theatre tends to view their audiences as
equal participants in the theatre
experience and what they do as artistic
production