The Arabian Nights: Play vs. Film Experience

There were many aspects of The Arabian Nights that caused it to be vastly different than watching a film version of the story. First, I think that seeing the play was a better experience, because it was in your face more so than a movie would be. I think this was largely due to the fact that the stage it was performed on was a three-quarter thrust stage. If it were a proscenium stage, I’m sure it would have felt more detached, much like a film does.

One specific aspect that made the play feel engaging to the audience was the presence of live music. Just like being at a concert, the audience could feel the music, and feel the experience of hearing it live rather than through a secondhand source. This added to the ‘in your face’ feel I mentioned earlier. Also adding to that feeling were the lanterns that were hanging above the stage and part of the audience. They weren’t hanging over where I was sitting, but if I was sitting one more row up, they would’ve been. I thought that was pretty cool, because it made the audience feel like they were more involved in the staging a little bit, and it also added to the ambiance in the room. One thing that was mentioned in the class discussion, but that I didn’t personally experience, was that from a certain section of the audience, you could feel the fire from the fire-breathing.

One of the main things that made watching the play different was the feeling of interactivity that was pretty apparent. It was mostly evident only during the storytelling portions of the show, but the actors almost presented their stories in a way that made it feel like they were talking directly to the audience. That is certainly something that you don’t experience in movie, unless it’s something like Shakespeare, because some of the soliloquies are presented directly to the camera. Anyway, I thought that it was really cool that it felt like the audience was being included in the storytelling process.

Another aspect that made the live play interesting was the improve scene. If you were to see the play multiple times, you’d get a different experience each time during that particular section. If you were to see a movie multiple times, you’d get the same movie, because it is pre-recorded a certain way.

But, there are also a couple of ways that the play experience is similar to the movie experience. For example, during my performance, a cell phone went off. It actually went off twice. That kind of thing happens all the time in the movie theater. Also you almost always have those pain in the ass people sitting in your vicinity who never shut up for anything during any kind of activity that requires an audience. We had some of those both during this performance as well as during Godspell. Last night at the Nickelback concert, we had an obnoxious whistler guy who seemed to know everybody in the freaking audience. It happens everywhere, one of those universal audience things.

Overall, both forms of drama have their merits, but I actually liked this style of play a lot because of the ‘in your face’ factor.