What was your first impression of Ms Darbus from the High School Musical franchise? Don’t remember who she was? You know, the middle-aged lady with white hair? The teacher? My 8-year-old self would have told you that she was the cranky old lady who was remotely far from being anyone’s favourite teacher. She taught drama at East High and was also the main sponsor and supporter of the school drama club – her passion for theatre was undeniable, which brings me to my point, are all drama enthusiasts this weird?
Let’s take another example from my humble cinematic experience. The Pacifier is a story about a navy officer who in order to finish his mission has to become the housekeeper for a family of five children. The second eldest child, a boy named Seth, was actively engaged in a reprise of The Sound of Music under the visions of a self-proclaimed professional theatre director. Cocky, self-conceited, bossy, disrespectful to others – I doubt that there would be any nice word to describe the guy. While the purpose of the character is to be tossed aside in order for our protagonist to step in and take the lead in the production, the theatre director is the representative of the “professional” theatre world in this movie and in my point of view, he is definitely not at all lovable.
One of my favourite movies About Time also features a member of the theatre crew as a supporting personality – Harry, the playwright. While the whole movie is a beautifully calm serenade about love and family, Harry made his debut as a rude angry old man, stressed by his own job – writing plays. Eventually the audience would find his appearance nothing near annoying but more of a weird touch to the protagonist’s life. However, it doesn’t change the fact that Harry is indeed a cranky man immersed in his world of ideas, from which comes play after play.
Now when I look back at my experience with theatre in mass media, I find myself reflecting on amateur drama producers with somewhat uneasily comprehensible attitudes and behaviour – they are not the bad guys, the audience wouldn’t hate them or even remember them (as they are minor characters only). Nevertheless, they definitely did not leave their audience any positive image of the theatre world.
Some would say that media is supposed to be a bridge between us – the audience – and the world out there that we are unfamiliar with. The lack of inclusivity in portraying these subjects not only creates insufficient understandings, but also reflects how popular audience consider them eventually. Likewise, the portrayal of theatre in popular media has attached an “exclusive” tag to the term – it is either so bizarre that no one wants to be in the same league, or so noble and prestige that no one feels that they could be in the same league. Either way, it’s incomprehensible.
Well, one may argue that stereotypes cannot just exist without reason. Theatre has indeed become something so alien to popular audience nowadays that what they see in mass media is the only impression they have of theatre, which consequently strengthens the stereotypical image, the exclusiveness of theatre that already exists in many minds.
What we should be seeing in mass media isn’t some minor, easily forgotten characters – we deserve to see the whole picture. It shouldn’t just be the stressed, quick-tempered side of a playwright that we see, but also his tremendous world of ideas, his struggle in finding the right expression for thoughts that we could all relate to. Theatre directors don’t always have to be bossy and stressed out: they too could also be caring of their colleagues, they too could shed tears, the tears of joy at the success of their productions. The drama teachers too don’t have to be all weird and dramatic – well, they did bring a little bit of Ms Darbus’ soft side out in the last part of the franchise, it is some progress.
There is so much more to theatre than what popular content is showing us. The absurd side, yes, it does exist – theatre is sometimes a world of weirdos. There are crazy people doing theatre and theatre could be so abstract that most of the time we wouldn’t know what’s going on. But the other side, the more comprehensible, more relatable side of theatre is also there.
And so, could I kindly ask movie producers or any popular content creators to be a tad sweeter towards theatre?