I think this poll is pretty self-explanatory. I’ll let the definition of “live theatre performance” be pretty broad - if you saw some elementary school students do Winnie the Pooh, that will count, though I would like any show you count to have lasted at least an hour.
For those who don’t get the joke, a lot of musicals are called “Title! The Musical”, such as “Shopping! The Musical”.
EDIT : Since I love dance, I’ll let dance shows count too.
Pretty much never, unless the show’s connected with something else I’m doing. I saw A Christmas Carol in sixth grade with my English class, and this year I helped with a production of Aristophanes’s Frogs that some Ancient Studies majors at my university put on. Those are the only two plays that I can recall ever having seen live.
Edit: Italicize “Frogs”
I guess I don’t see many plays because I don’t like most of the plays they put on. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess, and I just don’t go. Once they put on Calderón and I was all over that, but otherwise, meh.
Very seldom - it’s due to lack of money not lack of interest.
I’m hoping to see Richard III this year. Most productions I’ve seen with this group have been pretty well done. Especially King Lear a few years back.
WB
Second option, most of contemporary European theater. What I hate is to watch is Anicent Greek theater plays. I’m sick on the mere thought of it.
Hmm. Actually, I’ve never been to a play.
However I want you all to know that I wholeheartedly approve of them.. in theory.
Rich
I’ve been helping with the sewing for a local theater group for about the last year, so I get to see plays at least every few months. I probably wouldn’t manage to go quite so often otherwise.
Just out of curiosity, why? Because you’re convinced contemporary renderings must be bad?
Granted, no modern rendering is going to be quite the same as what the Greeks themselves would have seen. Does that mean we are not to try? Does that mean that Greek theater is to be completely inaccessible to modern audiences, on stage, but reduced instead to something to be studied in textbooks? What use is it to study classics at all if this goal – of capturing something of the Greek spirit, of understanding it, of bringing it to life – is unattainable?
I will say that I don’t particularly care for productions which are too consciously contemporary – particularly when the motivation for this is that the director felt a need to “update” it so modern audiences would understand. I have seen a couple of modern performances based on Greek theater which did not completely impress me. I’ve also seen a version of “The Trojan Women”, from the aforementioned theater group, which I thought was quite good, although I’m far from an expert on the history of classical theater. But I think it’s important to remember that all theater is (re)interpretation. There is no fixed version of what a performance “should” look like.