From the stage to the silver screen
By Claire Hellar
Nov. 15, 2010 12:41 a.m.
It’s a Friday evening at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, Calif. As the show ends, the audience rises to its feet, clapping enthusiastically through several curtain calls. Yet the actors they are clapping for cannot hear them, and the show they have just viewed is not a live performance, not in the traditional sense of the word anyway.
The audience at La Mirada has just experienced a rising trend in entertainment known as cinemacasting. Cinemacasting is the broadcast of theater events such as plays, operas and musicals to cinema screens around the world. It is also known as simulcasting or live screening.
In 2009, London’s National Theatre Live began broadcasting some of its most successful plays to cinemas around the world. These performances are filmed in high-definition and broadcast via satellite to over 22 countries.
Brian Kite, the producing artistic director of La Mirada, a UCLA alumnus and a visiting assistant professor in the UCLA theater department, moved to collaborate with National Theatre early on and said that he has been very pleased with the partnership.
“It’s clearly bringing in new people ““ there are a lot of new patrons buying tickets … people who have never been to the theater before. … This is a little different fare ““ I thought it would be a good way to reach out,” Kite said.
The Metropolitan Opera also launched “The Met: Live in HD” in 2006 (now in its fifth season), with performances broadcast to theaters across the country.
National CineMedia (better known to the public as Fathom Events) acquires and distributes the Metropolitan performances to theaters. Founded in 2002, it is a leading distribution company for entertainment events to theater screens.
According to Dan Diamond, vice president of National CineMedia, a variety of live events, including the Met performances, are broadcast to over 500 theaters on any given weekend.
“We’re filling up the Rose Bowl, in essence, for some of these events. … We’re doing it across the country as opposed to one particular venue,” Diamond said.
Like Kite, Diamond speaks of the different demographics that these events bring.
“The opera is bringing an audience back to the theaters that haven’t frequented theaters in the past 15 to 20 years. … (The live screenings) have reignited that fanbase of interest in movie theaters as well, not only the opera … creating a very powerful grassroots opportunity in movie theaters.”
UCLA English Professor Anne Mellor is a regular attendee of both Metropolitan Opera and National Theatre Live screenings at nearby theaters.
“The Metropolitan Opera, the musical ones are tremendous. They allow you to be much closer to the speakers than you would in a large house. The acoustics in the ones I’ve been going to at Century City have been superb,” Mellor said.
Mellor said she has also attended three National Theatre Live productions (“All’s Well that Ends Well,” “London Assurance,” and “A Disappearing Number”) at the Mann Chinese 6 Theatre in Hollywood. However, she has mixed feelings about theatrical screenings.
“I’m happy to go because, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to get to London to see them, (but) I really felt I was missing a lot. They had a lot of rear stage projections that just didn’t communicate on the flat screen ““ the sense of depth, of the actors moving back,” Mellor said.
Live screenings supplement, rather than replace, live events, bringing one-time live shows to audiences and demographics that would otherwise be missed.
