In a place like the Greek Theater in L.A., to try and create a close connection with the audience seems almost antithetical to the architecture of the building.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.
The one thing I have always felt about musical theatre is that it is, to an extraordinary degree, about construction.
In Elizabethan England or classical Athens... theater was at the center of, not culture, but society and politics and religion and civic engagement. Those things have a different audience.
Architecture was always the plan. I always figured I'd just do theater on the side.
When I first went to L.A., I really hated it. I had this preconceived idea of what it would be like. You think of Hollywood as this beautiful place, but everything looks rundown and old.
When I was very young, I thought the theatre was a place where higher beings went about their celestial business, as if they knew nothing of ordinary life and its political mysteries.
More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat.
So, we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene, that it just became its own thing.
Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.
There's such a work ethic involved in theatre that you can't learn in L.A.
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