From Page to Stage to Screen: The Live Theatre Broadcast as a New Medium

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The live theatre broadcast has witnessed a phenomenal rise in both popularity and profile over the past decade. This article considers the live theatre broadcast as both a new medium and a form of adaptation. It examines how the medium is ontologically, economically, and culturally positioned between theatre and film, and the extent to which it is, as John Wyver puts it, a ‘hybrid form’. Analyzing the medium in terms of Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, I question how the live theatre broadcast challenges the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ that Benjamin sees as vital to the ‘aura’ of the work of art. I investigate how the live theatre broadcast’s lack of ‘here’ affects audience perception, and how liveness might be seen as a condition of perception rather than of transmission. Exploring Benjamin’s suggestion that film’s celebrization of the actor acts as compensation for the actor’s lack of physical presence, I ask how this concept might inform our understanding of actors in the live theatre broadcast. Finally, the article assesses the extent to which the live theatre broadcast directs the perception of the viewer, and how this direction removes the autonomy of viewing that theatre affords.</jats:p>