The Immediate Theatre, part 1 (p 110 to 134) Summary and Analysis

The author begins this essay with commentary on theatre's uniqueness in the world of art in general, and in its relationship to the apparently similar narrative art of the cinema in particular. "The cinema", he writes, "flashes on to a screen images from the past. As this is what the mind does to itself all through life, the cinema seems intimately real . . . the theatre, on the other hand, always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real than the normal stream of consciousness. This also is what can make it so disturbing". He then prefaces the next section of this essay with the comment that what he's about to speak of is entirely subjective and based on his own personal experience creating theatre. Anyone reading the...