I ask Broadway producer Avi Borenstein: "What does the medium do better than movies or TV or the novel?"
Avi replies: Let me offer an analogy. Why does anyone go to a football game in a stadium on a cold, wet winter afternoon when they could get a better view on TV, with replay, a comfy couch and warmth?
The answer is, there is something special about being there…and that same special experience occurs at the theater. There is nothing that seems to involves you like live theater. There is the immediacy of the actors, the live crowd, if you are close enough to see, the spitting as the actors emote, the hush when something special happens, it is there.
In today’s world, the experiencing of the entertainment medium is changing. Movie attendance is down..people watch DVD’s and pass up the movie theater. More money is made in the sports world on cable and TV than at the theater.
And yet, for the big game, the big event, there is something special about being there.
The same applies to live theater…it is the total experience that makes it compelling, keeps it compelling, and when the whole world is watching movies on a screen built in to their eye shades, will keep live TV as compelling as ever.
"What have you been working on in the past two years?"
The past year "Curtains" with David Hyde Pierce (closing June 29) and "Is He Dead?" a new work by mark Twain, reworked and rediscovered. That was a straight play and while a critical success did not do so well at the box office and closed early.
