The Entertainer

When the the theater workers strike they say the Broadway stages have gone dark. Of course the locution is used in the period when they strike the set of one production with another in the metaphorical eaves. Theater can be very boring and you can’t even eat popcorn. That’s one of the reasons for the tedium; it’s a little like a religious service. At its very worst it’s funereal. You have to endure the indignant hushes of all attendees at this solemn event. More often than not, one is asked to be in a Greek theatre with its spiritual overtones rather than the raucus and aptly named Globe where the audiences fornicated in the aisles. Even though Godard famously intoned that cinema is  "truth at 24 frames per second," it's theater that's more like life. To begin with you have fresh and blood actors. Further, in fact, you have something tantamount to action painting. Followers of Stanislavsky will protest but what's on stage is not a representation of life but in effect life itself, to wit actors in a play and life which is often boring. 

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