Camilla Jones, a seventeen year old student is a movie buff and defines cinema as enthralling, but is equally fascinated by the world of theatre. She is seriously thinking of pursuing Arts and Drama for her Undergraduate studies. Cinema is supposed to be “the most beautiful fraud in the world” and in the 21^st century world of SFX and CGI, one might think that live art form such as the theatre is dying out. Well it is definitely not.

The recent Soapbox Debate held at the Menier Chocolate Factory concluded with the audience forthrightly supporting that theatre is a far more superior art form than cinema.

 The debate was attended by eminent personalities from the field of theatre, film and contemporary art, where the Guardian Theatre critic Michael Billington said, “You lean forward to watch a play because you are actively engaged with what is happening on the stage, you lean back in a cinema.” simultaneously describing a film’s vocabulary as something which is predictable and unoriginal. According to him, “Theatre is more responsive to the times in which we live and the politics of the day.” Even financially, English theatres are in a better state than ever before. Theatre companies like Hijinx Theatre, Moving Being Productions, Big Foot Theatre, play a pivotal role as a training ground for amateur actors, new writers to develop their craft.     

Billington’s views are well supported by theatre companies based in and around
Cardiff. David Wilson, Administrator of Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre, maintains, “It is true that not just the elderly but the young also enjoy theatre over films. This art form has a different appeal altogether; moreover the quality of our shows is very high, celebrating various forms of musical theatre.” Wilson also added that the theatre scene in
Cardiff is thriving with more people returning to the arts.

The New Theatre located in the City Centre has staged a couple of plays over the past week. Box Office assistant John Walsh of the New Theatre adds, “Dickens’ Christmas Carol staged on November 11th was heavily booked whilst House of the Gods staged on November12th demanded a specialist audience who knew about the plot.”  This could be attributed to the popularity of Dickens’ novel or possibily the universal appeal of theatre. It’s a busy time of the year for most theatre companies with the spirit of Yuletide just round the corner. The History Boys, an Alan Bennett comedy about school life in the 1950s opened to a full house in the New Theatre, with tickets being sold out in advance.

Although Charles Evans, Touring Company Manager for The History Boys claims, “Theatre is for a more mature audience, in other words people should have a call for it”, Joanna Evans, an Architecture student, refutes, “Stephen Moore’s portrayal of Hector was highly commendable. The production is of a very high quality.”

Therefore one can rightly conclude that theatre doesn’t begin and end simply with the rise and fall of curtains, there is something more to it.(504 words)