BWW Blog: Theater - An Invitation to Read Between the Lines

Sometimes, in my English class, I feel an overwhelming urge to shout it out: "The curtains were blue!" The saying is common among students, an adage that rose from a hypothetical situation: the author writes "the curtains were blue" and the Literature teacher reads into it, saying "the curtains represent his immense depression and his lack of will to carry on," when really, the author just means that the curtains were blue.

While I think literary criticism is valid and has a place in academia, it is all too easy to overstep bounds and attribute something to the author's line of thought when it wasn't intended at all. I believe that the critics who love doing this may be more suitable to analyze another medium: theater.

Theater is more conducive to this type of over analyzing. Theater begins with a script but is made for the stage. A giant team of people is required to bring it to life. Every decision is carefully curated and weighed, with theater-makers asking how each choice will contribute to the story, or impact the audience. Unlike in literature, "the curtains were blue" is not just an act of imagination-in theater, an entire production and design team has to deliberate using the color blue, select a blue curtain, and string it up in the theater. Because of the sheer amount of people involved in the collaboration process, nearly every detail is a calculated, meaningful choice.

In most cases, live-action films scout ready-to-go locations and sets, whereas a theater is a literal black box-a blank canvas to piece together a set from scratch. A girl's bedroom can't simply be transplanted into a theater-it must be created from the ground up, a product of everyone pulling their resources and selecting what would fit best for the play.

Because of the repetition of multiple shows a week, actors' choices can be read into for deeper meaning. What starts off as a flick of the hand in rehearsal becomes solidified night after night of performances-even if the meaning wasn't originally there, a theater actor discovers meaning through reenactments. If an actor cannot find meaning in their blocking, a certain movement, or an intonation of a line, then it is cut from the scene-eight performances a week on Broadway tends to cut away the superfluous, as the creative team can quickly see what is working and what is not.

Of course, what makes theater the most favorable medium to analyzing is the fact that it is a living, breathing creature. No performance is the same, and yet every night theatermakers strive to tell the same story and score the same emotional impact with the new audience. The New York Times' review of "Dear Evan Hansen" with Taylor Trensch stepping into Ben Platt's shoes encapsulates how theater lends itself to reading in between the lines-both literally and figuratively. Critic Jesse Green writes how small things, like reducing the number of Evan's tics and twitches, can shift the reception of the exact same story. And yet, some things never change, as the rest of the cast "has dug deeper into its roles," finding more depth and meaning in lines they've been reciting for nearly a year and a half. The decisions behind director Michael Greif's staging are also meant to be read into-Green describes Dear Evan Hansen as "high-def theater: full of color and information wherever you look." Theater invites the audiences to abstract meaning from every detail on stage, because it is the product of time, teamwork, originality, repetition, and vitality.

So the next time a theater's curtains are blue, feel free to ask why. Even if a blue curtain was the only thing a low-budget college production could get its hands on, you still are at liberty to wonder how it affects the audience and the ambience. In theater, a direction like "the curtains were blue," doesn't remain lines on a page. It leaps to life on stage, envelops the audience, and allows us to drink in the blue.

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