[00:00.00]Narrator: Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor.
[00:07.58]Female Professor: OK, let's see, [00:12.70]right … "Modern stagings of a Shakespearean classic.” [00:16.98]Well like I told you last week I think that’s a great topic for your paper. [00:22.93]So the title'll be something like …[00:26.10]Male Student: I'm not really sure. Probably something like “Twentieth-Century Stagings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”[00:32.68]Female Professor: Yes. I like that: [00:34.09]straightforward and to the point. [00:35.97]So how's the research going?[00:37.93]Male Student: Well, that's what I came to talk to you about. [00:40.31]I was wondering if you happened to have a copy of the Peter Brook production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in your video collection. [00:47.05]I' been looking for it everywhere, and … I’m having a really hard time tracking it down.[00:52.21]Female Professor: That's because it doesn't exist.[00:53.86]Male Student: Huh! You mean in your collection, or at all?[00:56.79]Female Professor: I mean at all. [00:57.99]That particular production was never filmed or recorded.[01:01.63]Male Student: Oh no. I had no idea. [01:04.39]From what I’ve read, that production, like, it influenced every other production of the play that came after it [01:10.53]so … I just assumed it had been filmed or videotaped.[01:14.19]Female Professor: Oh, it definitely was a landmark production, [01:16.62]and … it's not like it ran for just a week, but either it was never filmed, or if it was, the film has been lost. [01:24.25]And it’s ironic because there's even a film about the making of the production, but none of the production itself.[01:30.62]Male Student: So now what do I do … [01:32.12]if there's no video … ?[01:33.62]Female Professor: Well, think about it. [01:34.93]This is the most important twentieth-century staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, right?
[01:40.15]Male Student: But how can I write about Brook's interpretation of the play if I can't see his production?[01:45.12]Female Professor: Just because there's no recording doesn't mean you can't figure out how it influenced other productions.
[01:50.55]Male Student: I guess there's enough material around. But it'll be a challenge.[01:55.57]Female Professor: True, but think about it: You're writing about dramatic arts … the theater, and that's the nature of theater isn’t it?
[02:03.19]Male Student: You mean because it's live, when the performance is finished …
[02:06.90]Female Professor: That’s it, unless it's filmed, it’s gone! [02:09.83]But that doesn't mean we can't study it. [02:12.00]And of course some students in this class are writing about productions in the nineteenth century… and there are no videos of those. [02:19.00]You know, one of the challenges for people who study theater is to find ways of talking about something that's really so transient, about something that in a sense, doesn't exist.
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