Source: Hueiyen News Service
Guwahati, September 27, 2009:
The myth of infinite progress has been defeated.
Marx, the prophet of progress and his liberalist rivals Malthus who cautioned about limits to progress.
Theatre, the art of arts according to Bharata, has been coeval with human culture.
Technological advance has always influenced it particularly in the last two centuries in various forms: electric lights, microphones, technically well-equipped play houses - different mechanical means of creating stage illusion.
Both professional and modern theatres of 20th century tried to benefit from this development, but then came cinema, a technologically more advanced medium of entertainment.
The great freedom of the camera had an unprecedented capacity to create illusions on the screen.
No wonder cinema became the new art for the masses, a position theatre had occupied earlier.
The later day prophets of progress like Raymond Williams argued that theatre would soon become redundant and predicted that the coming of TV would in the long run spell doom for cinema houses.