Theatre has a long history.
I have a dependent, quite manipulative, relationship with TV series.
There is no time to elaborate on either.
Now to the crux of it…I’m in love with both.
I know, I know, but this trope is common for a reason and I’ve got myself locked in a tight triangle. And it’s all because of time! Not how much time I have (that would be far too practical), it's about how they treat time.
The series which I gravitate to are what I would call character centric.
Theatre, on the other hand, by its condensed nature, means that even if I love the characters, I understand or relate to them only within the context of the narrative not independent from it.
Often when series end, there is a sense of incompletion—of the divulgence of consequences held just out of reach. So, there is an incentive for another series.
It is all about the money, and, as I mentioned, manipulative.
Theatre is self-contained. It ends within the night. It is controlled by time. And so sometimes it
skips.
Leaves a blank.
Leaps to a point of
reconciliation, or forgiveness, or hindsight, where the crisis which preoccupied the majority of the play feels belittled by distance.
Both tend to pivot around
crisis,
understandably. A moment of shift. Which brings tension and places people’s values and prioritises under strain. It has magnitude. Often this comes when characters are young—when life is malleable (or unstable) enough to alter at the touch.
In Vibrations it’s the breakdown of a friendship.
But why must we move beyond this? Leap into the future; situate the crisis as past? What happens if we are not given the reassurance of cyclicity or the introduction of time as an emotional diluter? What if theatre, like film, finished as though—
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