Welcome to Play It Again!, a newsletter about stories and their personal connections.
This week is the second of two essays around engaging with entertainment – books, film, theatre, and television – during the pandemic. They won’t all be this topical, or this personal, but it’s a good place to start on this whole Substack thing.
Last week I covered the Rotterdam International Film Festival. It was a great week of films from around the world, and on a personal level a great way to get back into something of a working and writing routine. That said, I’m looking forward to a (slightly) calmer few weeks on the film criticism front.
IFFR ties in quite neatly with what I was planning to write this week, as it felt like the first proper arts “event” I’ve experienced in quite some time. While IFFR made films available for 72 hour windows rather than set time slots, messaging friends about the films we watched and sharing recommendations brought back some of the in-the-moment conversations had in cinema foyers and out on the street. We weren’t together live in the same auditorium, and the audience was limited just to fellow film critics, but it felt pretty close to the real deal.
The pandemic has fundamentally altered the way in which film, television, and theatre are distributed to and experienced by scattered audiences. Some productions proceed as normal but are delayed reaching screens, others are modified drastically to keep their artists safe, yet others perform to closed venues, and a fair few are on hold indefinitely. Some have even sprung up out of the unique challenges and constraints of the pandemic, such as last year’s excellent Host.
However, the sense of art as a communally experienced, time-limited event – film festivals and their limited audience excepted – seems strangely muted. Release dates come and go without the fanfare of a cinema trip, often after being changed so many times that the actual one feels unreal. There are no cinema runs to worry about missing. Streaming platforms have exploded, and their offerings are borderline overwhelming. But even when Netflix drops Oscars hopefuls on a Friday night, the excitement over watching it is much less knowing it will be there until the end of the service (at this rate, possibly forever).
This fundamentally should not make a difference in the way I engage with or enjoy the latest film, or the way I share thoughts with my film-loving friends, but it has proved surprisingly hard to get over. Was this community what I found joy in more than the need to stay up on the latest releases? As a film writer / performing arts fan, it’s led to some crises of identity and occupation over the past year – a monumentally silly problem when compared to everything going on right now, but sometimes it is easier to talk about the little things that provoke the strangest reactions.
Strangely, what has proved far more rewarding was the theatre archives the pandemic opened like floodgates. The National Theatre in London put a free show online every week and has now built its own subscription player. The Metropolitan Opera has a new broadcast each night (they’re cycling back through the archives now, but some repeats are impossible to tire of). The Royal Opera House initially had free fortnightly streams on YouTube and now moved to their own player with a nominal fee, Shakespeare’s Globe and Bristol Old Vic set up their own pages, and the Vienna State Opera made archival streams available on their site as and when they felt like it (it is nominally daily, but they’ve played fast and loose with that). Even Andrew Lloyd Webber deigns let people see his biggest hits for free on the occasional weekend. Picking out a weekly programme from among these is genuinely the highlight of my entertainment right now.
My sudden infatuation with and attachment to these shows is twofold. In all cases except the National’s new subscription-based streaming library (and the Met’s pre-existing one from which they’re offering their selection), the model adopted has set a limited time frame for viewing. Texting friends who are also watching The Phantom of the Opera as it premieres at 7.30pm sharp, or finding new communities all buzzing for the 24 hours during which Eugene Onegin will be available, adds a buzz to sitting down on the sofa to a pre-recorded show. The National Theatre had previously discussed their decision not to release their shows on DVD by saying that theatre should be ephemeral; they’ve changed course in these unprecedented times, but it is somewhat magical to imagine a more romantic, glamorous, special night “in” when you have the limited chance to stream.
Most of the magic, however, comes from how achingly alive these past shows are. You can see the auditoriums packed full of people. They rustle and murmur, they cough, the laugh, and the applause makes me turn down my volume so the speakers can handle it. The shows were made for those sat in the cheap seats at the top of the balcony, and not for us at home with the HD front row view that feels almost hyper-real. What previously struck me as an unsuitable, second-rate viewing experience now becomes an event’s living, breathing, picture-perfect document and celebration.
Having only a day or a week to watch a piece has some convenience drawbacks (and works better for existing libraries rather than new film and television releases), but it’s free – and it’s exciting. And crucially, it’s building a fan base for the theatre for when we’re able to return in person. These broadcasts are far from substitutes, and finding a world where the broadcasts and performances are available together will only grow audiences and keep theatre accessible. I hope this communal pandemic theatre experience leads to new doors opening and pray the theatres will still be here when we’re safe to gather.
I can’t wait to be back in the cheap seats. And I care so very little about the Oscars now. I hope both never change.