The other night, my mother treated David and me to the production of Jesus Christ Superstar that’s playing Broadway right now. We did this because somehow, despite living in the New York Metropolitan Area all his life, David had never seen a Broadway musical before, which was in serious need of rectification. I, on the other hand, have seen quite a few, and I’ve always been fascinated the most by shows like Superstar: the ones with minimalist staging.
Many Broadway shows use elaborate sets, realistically depicting the surroundings and location of wherever the characters are supposed to be. The process of changing these sets mid-show is often just as elaborate — the stage crew scrambles to move props and backdrops offstage, move new ones on, sometimes using pulleys to drop them from the rafters, elevators to lift them from below the stage, whichever. The most impressive productions automate all of this, with setpieces that seem to magically roll on and offstage without the aid of crewmembers.
This is expensive.
Because of the cost — or sometimes purely for artistic reasons — many Broadway shows resort to minimalism. They don’t have a set. They don’t have a backdrop. The few props and setpieces they have are often multi-purpose. In lieu of backdrops, they set the scene with lighting and writing. For example, Superstar handles scene-changes by scrolling the location across a big text marquee; “STREETS OF JUDEA – FRIDAY” scrolls across the stage the way stock prices glide through Times Square. The RBC production of The Threepenny Opera used neon signs. And both times I saw Company — the 2006 Broadway revival and the 2011 Lincoln Center thing with Colbert and Neil Patrick Harris — they basically just moved props around to indicate a scene change.
In 2009, I remember asking myself, why not do this kind of thing in film? The result was the clusterfuckity failed experiment of Bright Black, which is something I’ve vowed to revisit someday when I’ve actually had the chance to coherently plan it. Getting another look at minimalist theatre got me thinking about it again, though.
First, actually, let me answer that question. Why not stage a film in the style of minimalist theatre? Because films don’t have to deal with set changes, time constraints, or any of the other things that makes minimalism advantageous in theatre, for example. Also, theatre has a rich tradition of the audience suspending their disbelief and filling stuff in with their imagination, whereas films have to depict absolutely everything or risk seeming unrealistic. To which I retort, or do they?
My idea for Bright Black was a film lit entirely with black light. Costumes and props would be painted with UV-reactive paint, while everything else would be bathed in dark blue if visible at all. This lends itself very well to minimalist set design, because most of the background is going to be shrouded in darkness anyway.
And besides, the plot would be about wisecracking, katana-wielding Illuminati assassins who have sword fights in Belgian dance clubs. So any pretense of realism has already left the building.
Now, I’m definitely not the only person who’s ever had the idea to stage a film this way. I’ve seen it in Adrian Noble’s 1996 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and…well, that’s it, really. Rob Marshall’s Chicago kind of did it in a few scenes. Spike Lee’s Passing Strange movie (pictured above) was actually just a recording of the Broadway show, so that doesn’t count (By the way, watch Passing Strange. Right now. I firmly believe it is the most spectacular piece of performance art that anyone has ever staged in any theater, anywhere, ever.). Hitchcock’s Rope was a film staged like a play, but not like a minimalist one. So minimalism on film is, from what I can tell, fairly uncharted territory.
It’s interesting, because when film was first invented, the medium struggled to be anything more than recorded theatre. It wasn’t until Griffith and Kuleshov that the idea of film as a narrative medium distinct from live theatre really took off, only for it to regress back into emulating the stage for a few years as soon as talkies appeared. It seems like film has ever since been trying to loudly proclaim “I am not theatre!”.
So I was thinking, during the intermission of Superstar, when I decide to pick up Bright Black again and really do it right, why not stage it like one of these minimalist shows? And not just borrow the sparse set design, like I was originally envisioning? Why not totally go for broke? Don’t cut to the next scene, have a bunch of ninjas in the background change the set while the actors are still there. Use spotlights and stage lights, and have them all be very noticeable and visible. Let’s make the head of the Illuminati be called “the man behind the curtain”, and literally open a curtain every time Jarod Bright walks into his office.
It’s kind of like how the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill was clearly designed by an architect who knew the choreography of the sword fight that would one day happen there. But even further off-the-wall and thoroughly divorced from reality, concerned only with the abstract aesthetics of what’s happening on screen.
Film Needs More Minimalist Theatre
The other night, my mother treated David and me to the production of Jesus Christ Superstar that’s playing Broadway right now. We did this because somehow, despite living in the New York Metropolitan Area all his life, David had never seen a Broadway musical before, which was in serious need of rectification. I, on the other hand, have seen quite a few, and I’ve always been fascinated the most by shows like Superstar: the ones with minimalist staging.
Many Broadway shows use elaborate sets, realistically depicting the surroundings and location of wherever the characters are supposed to be. The process of changing these sets mid-show is often just as elaborate — the stage crew scrambles to move props and backdrops offstage, move new ones on, sometimes using pulleys to drop them from the rafters, elevators to lift them from below the stage, whichever. The most impressive productions automate all of this, with setpieces that seem to magically roll on and offstage without the aid of crewmembers.
This is expensive.
Because of the cost — or sometimes purely for artistic reasons — many Broadway shows resort to minimalism. They don’t have a set. They don’t have a backdrop. The few props and setpieces they have are often multi-purpose. In lieu of backdrops, they set the scene with lighting and writing. For example, Superstar handles scene-changes by scrolling the location across a big text marquee; “STREETS OF JUDEA – FRIDAY” scrolls across the stage the way stock prices glide through Times Square. The RBC production of The Threepenny Opera used neon signs. And both times I saw Company — the 2006 Broadway revival and the 2011 Lincoln Center thing with Colbert and Neil Patrick Harris — they basically just moved props around to indicate a scene change.
In 2009, I remember asking myself, why not do this kind of thing in film? The result was the clusterfuckity failed experiment of Bright Black, which is something I’ve vowed to revisit someday when I’ve actually had the chance to coherently plan it. Getting another look at minimalist theatre got me thinking about it again, though.
First, actually, let me answer that question. Why not stage a film in the style of minimalist theatre? Because films don’t have to deal with set changes, time constraints, or any of the other things that makes minimalism advantageous in theatre, for example. Also, theatre has a rich tradition of the audience suspending their disbelief and filling stuff in with their imagination, whereas films have to depict absolutely everything or risk seeming unrealistic. To which I retort, or do they?
My idea for Bright Black was a film lit entirely with black light. Costumes and props would be painted with UV-reactive paint, while everything else would be bathed in dark blue if visible at all. This lends itself very well to minimalist set design, because most of the background is going to be shrouded in darkness anyway.
And besides, the plot would be about wisecracking, katana-wielding Illuminati assassins who have sword fights in Belgian dance clubs. So any pretense of realism has already left the building.
Now, I’m definitely not the only person who’s ever had the idea to stage a film this way. I’ve seen it in Adrian Noble’s 1996 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and…well, that’s it, really. Rob Marshall’s Chicago kind of did it in a few scenes. Spike Lee’s Passing Strange movie (pictured above) was actually just a recording of the Broadway show, so that doesn’t count (By the way, watch Passing Strange. Right now. I firmly believe it is the most spectacular piece of performance art that anyone has ever staged in any theater, anywhere, ever.). Hitchcock’s Rope was a film staged like a play, but not like a minimalist one. So minimalism on film is, from what I can tell, fairly uncharted territory.
It’s interesting, because when film was first invented, the medium struggled to be anything more than recorded theatre. It wasn’t until Griffith and Kuleshov that the idea of film as a narrative medium distinct from live theatre really took off, only for it to regress back into emulating the stage for a few years as soon as talkies appeared. It seems like film has ever since been trying to loudly proclaim “I am not theatre!”.
So I was thinking, during the intermission of Superstar, when I decide to pick up Bright Black again and really do it right, why not stage it like one of these minimalist shows? And not just borrow the sparse set design, like I was originally envisioning? Why not totally go for broke? Don’t cut to the next scene, have a bunch of ninjas in the background change the set while the actors are still there. Use spotlights and stage lights, and have them all be very noticeable and visible. Let’s make the head of the Illuminati be called “the man behind the curtain”, and literally open a curtain every time Jarod Bright walks into his office.
It’s kind of like how the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill was clearly designed by an architect who knew the choreography of the sword fight that would one day happen there. But even further off-the-wall and thoroughly divorced from reality, concerned only with the abstract aesthetics of what’s happening on screen.