general peculiarities
I love the 1953 movie Invaders from Mars. No, I did not see it at the movie theater (I was only one when it came out), but I watched it fourteen times in one week on Channel 9's Million Dollar Movie on our old black-and-white television set. The martian leader (a part octopus, part grey-glossy head inside a glass orb) was pretty darned scary; it might still be in 2015 (as I write this). However, the plodding mutants who did the leader's bidding were, frankly, stupid. Oh, they looked good enough from the front, but when they moved away from the camera, it was clear there were zippers on the rubber suits they wore.
That sort of spoiled the illusion.
This is what distinguishes (most) drama (whether on stage or on the large screen or the small screen)--drama is an audio-visual form. That difference makes us consider drama differently from other forms of literature. For one thing, a book is an active medium for the reader, and a film is a passive one.
wait! what? that makes no sense!
In France the movie director (and sometimes the producer) is said to be responsible for la realisation d'un film. In other words, the filmmaker makes the film real for the audience.
Is that a good thing? a bad thing? It is definitely a thing. Consider the implications:
barring individual quirks (differences in eyesight, hearing, attention, projector glitches for instance), everyone who sees Furious 7 sees the same thing. The muscle car Vin Diesel (Toretto) drives is a 1970 Dodge Charger. It will always be a 1970 Dodge Charger. If an audience mistakes it for a Prius, well, I don't know how to respond to that, but it is a 1970 Dodge Charger. The filmmakers (various roles) create the setting (location), the costumes, the camera angles, the sound effects, the props, possibly CGI, the edited cut(s) with background music, and so on. So when I go into the Dine-in Theater, I sit and RE-LAX. I don't have to do any work; it's all been done for me.
When I read a book, I do all the work. I have to imagine what things look like and just how scary/thrilling/romantic/funny something might be. I cast the piece in my head (personally, I often cast actors in the roles in my head, but I have seen A LOT of films). I have to imagine how the dialogue is paced and pitched. It's a lot of work. And I even sometimes have to stop to look up words to figure out what in heck the author is talking about.
So a film could certainly be "better" than a book, and (as is often said but not always the case) the book can be "better" than the movie.
Two examples to consider:
Stehen King's Cujo--the monster dog who terrified readers in 1981, appeared in a 1983 film version, and the terror vanished. While reading, that monster St. Bernard can turn into a ravenouos, rabid hell hound, getting creepier and creepier as the reader reshapes it in the mind. On the screen, Cujo is a big, floppy, slobbery, cute St. Bernard. Yes, he barks a lot, but you just want to hug him. The book works where the movie fails.
Furious 7: that would lose SO MUCH as a book. It is all car chases and explosions; it is audio-visual overload. Like Avatar (that makes three examples, I know), the movie is bound to be better than the book because it's strengths are the strengths of sounds and sights. HOWEVER, if James Cameron had not had his mega-budget to recreate a Halo-like universe in Avatar, it would likely look cheesy, like the monster at the end of Cloverfield (yes, that's four examples; stop counting!).
but what about plays--Shakespeare and all that?
The difference between films and live theater is (generally) striking. The history of "drama" is filled with clever technological gimmicks to create the illusion of reality. The Collosseum in Rome was sometimes filled with water, and pitched naval battles took place to entertain the crowds. 19th-century England featured a play with an on-stage horse race (that took place on a massive turntable; it was very dangerous).
More often than not, budget and space restrict what can be realised on a stage. Quite often, a few flats are used to suggest a scene (when Shakespeare's characters moved from, say, the city to the woods, a single tree was placed on the edge of the stage, and audiences knew, "AHA! We are in the woods now." Sometimes plays are performed with bare stages, and what the actors say/do suggests what the audience should be seeing. In this case, the audience is asked to do some of the work while other elements (the actor, the voice, the costume, the lighting) are made real in front of the viewers.
This puts live plays somewhere in the middle with the written word (requiring the most work from the reader) on one end and the film (requiring the least work from the audience) on either end.
That is not to say books are hard and plays are sorta-hard/sorta-easy and movies are easy. Some books are really easy; some movies are really hard. Both can be said of plays as well. Here are examples of each (feel free to disagree, but you should still get the idea):
Books: Stephen King's Under the Dome (easy) / Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 (hard)
Plays: Allers and Mecchi's (and several composers) The Lion King (easy) / Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (hard)
Films: James Wan's Furious 7 (easy - I can't get enough of it) / David Lynch's Eraserhead (hard)
don't ignore the differences, but don't be fooled by them
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POINT: All of the elements we looked at with the story is still relevant in a play. We still look for patterns and peculiarities. Plays and films may have significant setting, character, plot, symbolism, etc. to consider. However, in addition, we need to consider staging--the audio-visual elements that are produced for a live audience. How would you, for example, produce a small play in a small venue which required at least one actor to be delivering her lines while in the water?
A final reflection: (easy) and (hard) do not = (good) and (bad) or vice-versa. They may relate to what some English teacherc consider popular vs. literary, but I don't make that distinction. They certainly do relate to "I can soak up the plot and go along for the ride...wheeeeeee!" vs. "Hmmm...what's going on here? This will take some thinking." Personally, I like both. But if I had to write and analysis (exploring ideas, not just giving personal opinions) about something, I would probably pick something a bit harder and thought-provoking; it would give me much more to write about.
modern theater - "Trying to Find Chinatown"
This week's reading includes two modern one-act plays. As you can imagine, a one-act play is not likely to generate a lot of ticket sales; they are often produced in colleges and universities or at small and/or experimental theaters. As a result, they are typically low-budget productions. To make up for the lack of large venues and abundant funding, these plays are often staged with minimal sets, little technology (lasar light shows are expensive), and more suggestion than realism.
Really, what is absolutely necessary for David Huang's "Trying to Find Chinatown"? Not much. You might want the suggestion of a street corner, but it could easily just be performed on a blank stage instead. The dialogue lets us know where we are. An electric violin would be nice, and some Hendrix playing over a loudspeaker is in the stage directions. Beyond that, the weight of the play is carried in the dialogue (and Ronnie's monologue at the end).