‘The closest and the farthest away’: telling intermedial spatial stories in National Theatre Live – the case of Julius Caesar

ABSTRACT

This article explores the re-configuration of theatre space in the intermedial spatial practice of National Theatre Live, with a case study of the broadcast of Julius Caesar from the Bridge Theatre in 2018. Apart from the notion of simultaneous time, I identify space as another key theme in NT Live’s curation of a theatrical experience. Built mainly on the theories of Michel de Certeau and Sarah Bay-Cheng, I consider space as a dramaturgical component with socio-cultural impacts to propose seeing NT Live’s intermedial dramaturgy as telling spatial stories. This comprises strategies of framing the theatre space as culturally distinctive and relational, and working through a series of carefully designed process of fragmentating and sequencing theatre and film/ed spaces. The analysis of NT Live’s spatial practice of Julius Caesar engages with the idea of spatial stories to demonstrate the institutional agenda to tell a narratable spatial story. It links the intermedial spatial practice to the spatialised politics and intervenes in the agency of spectatorship. This method to study theatre broadcasts challenges the neutrality of the NT Live’s promise of delivering the ‘best seats in the house’, and calls further attention to the transformation of mediatised theatre in a changing context.

KEYWORDS:

• National Theatre Live
• Julius Caesar
• Spatial dramaturgy
• intermediality

Acknowledgement

The author would like to acknowledge comments on a paper presented at DRHA 2022, from which this article was developed. I also would like to thank my doctoral supervisors Tim White and Steve Purcell, my colleagues at the University of Warwick, and the reviewers, for their insightful suggestions during the preparation of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Brennan (2020).

2 National Theatre (2017). The statement dating February 2017 remained on National Theatre’s official website until it was deleted in a website update in January 2023.

3 Susan Bennett considers theatre as having an inner frame (‘the spectator’s performance of a fictional stage world’) and an outer frame (‘the idea of the theatrical event, the selection of material for production, and the audience’s definitions and expectations of a performance’). See Susan Bennett (1997, 16–17).

4 NT Live Press FAQs (2017).

5 Peggy Phelan (1993, 146).

6 Lauren Hitchman (2018, 174).

7 Erin Sullivan (2020, 92).

8 Theatre (2023).

9 This is examined through an article of the multiple frames of production and reception of the NT Live broadcast of Hedda Gabler in 2017. See Yangzi Zhou (2021, 416–34).

10 The use of words like ‘mediatisation’ and ‘mediatised’ here is in line with Philip Auslander’s theorisation that mediatisation is a process of mediation which involves ‘mechanical and electric technologies of recording and reproduction’. See Philip Auslander (2008, 59).

11 Here I add a slash between ‘film’ and the suffix ‘-ed’ to visually retain the doubleness of the mediatised space in NT Live. It can qualify as a film space in juxtaposition to the theatre space due to what a 2011 NESTA report describes as the ‘studio approach’ to filming that aspires to the scale and techniques of film production. It is also a filmed theatre space which implied the overall condition of mediatisation, thus absorbing cinematic and televisual practices to develop its narrative and aesthetic influence on the theatrical production. See NESTA (2011, 18).

12 National Theatre Live (2023).

13 Raymond Williams (2002, 83).

14 Jane Feuer (1983, 19).

15 The cinema-exclusive clips sometimes take up part of the performance’s interval as well, when remote audiences are called back to their seats earlier than those in the theatre. The interval clips tend to feature more in-depth interviews and information about the play and production. In comparison to the opening ones, they are rarely concerned with offering an overview of the location and space of the performance.

16 NESTA, Digital Broadcast of Theatre, p. 6.

17 National Theatre Live: Hedda Gabler, dir. by Ivo van Hove and Nick Wickham (2017).

18 National Theatre Live: Skylight, dir. by Stephen Daldry and Robin Lough (2014).

19 Michel de Certeau (2002, 98).

20 Michel de Certeau (2002, 97–98).

21 Michel de Certeau (2002, 121).

22 De Certeau, p. xiv.

23 Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler (2002, 39).

24 Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler (2002, 23).

25 Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler (2002, 38).

26 Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler (2002, 40).

27 Magda Romanska (2016, 1).

28 Geoffrey Proehl (2008, 182).

29 Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt (2006, 11).

30 Sarah Bay-Cheng (2007, 37–50).

31 Sarah Bay-Cheng (2007, 42).

32 Sarah Bay-Cheng (2007).

33 ‘NT Live Press FAQs’ (2017).

34 Michael D. Friedman (2016, 462).

35 Bay-Cheng (2007, 44).

36 Martin Barker (2013, 18).

37 National Theatre Live: Julius Caesar, dir. by Nicholas Hytner and Tony Grech-Smith (2018).

38 National Theatre Live: Julius Caesar, dir. by Nicholas Hytner and Tony Grech-Smith (2018).

39 See Nicholas Hytner (2018).

40 National Theatre Live: Julius Caesar, RNT/D/1/65.

41 The Bridge production was staged shortly after Oskar Eustis’ version at the Public Theater in New York, in which Caesar was given a Trump makeover, which was praised by Hytner as an illuminating example of ‘Shakespeare’s continued pugnacity as an analyst of contemporary politics’. See Nicholas Hytner (2018).

42 Andrew Harrison (2017).

43 Julius Caesar (Camera Script), 22 March 2018, the National Theatre Archive, RNT/D/2/49, 1.

44 Julius Caesar (Camera Script), 22 March 2018, the National Theatre Archive, RNT/D/2/49, 1.

45 Reproduced by the author based on the archived camera script.

46 This and all following images are screenshot by the author from Drama Online. William Shakespeare (2022).

47 National Theatre Live (2018).

48 Bay-Cheng, p. 46.

49 Barker, p. 14.

50 Bay-Cheng, p. 46.

51 Ibid.

52 In the play the stage direction ‘exuent all but’ appeared three times, leaving Brutus and Cassius (I.2), Brutus (II.1), and Antony (III.1) on stage. See William Shakespeare (2004).

53 American art theorist Michael Fried denounced the reflexibility of theatrical spectatorship, arguing that film is the only art that ‘escapes theatre entirely’ through antitheatrical absorption (p. 164). See Michael Fried (1998).

54 Julius Caesar (Camera Script), Sequence 8, Act 2 Scene 2. Times of scenes are from the Drama Online version and noted in in-text brackets.

55 Both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2016, where each party’s presidential nomination was revealed, featured performances by US singers. For example, Katy Perry gave a speech and performed on the last night of DNC in support of Hilary Clinton. See PBS NewsHour (2016).

56 Julius Caesar, I. 2. 10.

57 Julius Caesar, II. 1. 20-21.

58 Ibid., 12.

59 Bay-Cheng, p. 44.

60 Julius Caesar, III. 16-17.

61 Jürgen Habermas, ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’, New German Critique 3: 49–55 (p. 49).

62 See, for example, criticism of environmental theatre in a chapter ironically titled ‘Togetherness’ in Walter Kerr, God on the Gymnasium Floor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971); and Adam Alston’s (2016).

63 Alston, p. 140.

64 Andy Kesson (2018).

65 Bridge Theatre (2022).

66 Samuel Weber (1996, 117).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is supported by the China National Key Research Project in Arts Studies ‘Frontiers of Contemporary Theatre Theories in the West' (No.18ZD06).

Notes on contributors

Yangzi Zhou

Yangzi Zhou is a PhD researcher in Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick, where she also works as a aspects that (re)constructs the theatreness of live broadcast programmes such as National Theatre Live. She is interested in thinking theatre in connection with media, literature and philosophy.