As a still relatively new theatre goer (a year) I've been surprised at the number of plays I've seen which use video/film as an effect in the theatre.

Is this a new thing as technology makes it possible?
Is it necessary, or is it just another special effect available to the Director?

Plays I've seen which have used it are:

6 characters in search of an author (unavoidable here though, I'd say given it was based around documentary makers)
Speaking in tongues
Julius Caesar - RSC
Enron
Twelfth Night - RSC (just a little bit - a storm/wave effect)

I can't help but think that it may be a bit of a cheat....either that or it's assuming the audience can't imagine up the ideas themselves without this extra help.....or is it just a natural extension to the use of sets and props?

I wonder what the first use of video on stage was - anyone remember there earliest experience of it? Complicite got in there early I think. Who was the first to use video of a newsreader for example?

Cleverest use I remember was in The History Boys where characters walked in an out of videos - leaving the classroom and appearing on screen in the corridor.

I think it's a fairly recent addition to staging shows due to advances in technology.

I think it can work very well in theatre - adding another dimension or atmosphere. It is used by directors to make a straight play more filmic and interesting to a modern audience who need more visual stimulation to keep their attention.

Somtimes it can be used badly of course as a cost cutting exercise - projections instead of any scenery. Remember Woman in White - shudder!!!

I think video and projection can be good, but only when done with imagination. The West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Singin' In The Rain came in for criticism for its use of projection, but I quite liked it because the "scribble" style of the drawings added a new dimension to the show. But The Woman In White fell flat for me because in that case all the projections said to me was "We can't be bothered to paint some cloths". SITR did something with projection that couldn't be done in another way; TWIW did little more than a set of cloths could do, only it did it blurry and washed out.

Kneehigh's Brief Encounter had the best use of film and video I've seen. That production was brilliant altogether but they used a screen to represent the station and various other scenes really well.

That is a very good question but I have no idea what the answer is. In my time it has gone from non-existent to mandatory (in Rupert Goold's productions anyway) but I can't remember at all the first time I saw it.

I don't know the history of it (I became a regular theatre-goer in 2006 with Sunday in the Park with George; technically no film or video, but awesome projections, so this kind of thing has been in the theatre longer than I have), but I don't see the harm in it. Creators of theatre *should* embrace new technologies. I wouldn't fancy having to see every show outdoors because no one invented spotlights, or only ever seeing musicals where the leads were cast primarily for their ability to reach the back of the stalls over a full orchestra rather than being pleasant to listen to or good at acting. Sure, film, TV, and projections probably aren't always going to be necessary or done well, but if they can add to rather than detract from a production, then bring it ON.

We have been going into London regularly to go to the theatre for about five years now.

I think that the first time I saw video/television being used was in Richard II at the Old Vic with Kevin Spacey. It was done in modern dress and had a "here and now" feel about it. The King's procession had a news camera man filming and we could see it on a big screen. It was really effective and added (to my mind) to an amazing production.

I agree that Kneehigh's Brief Encounter used film and video brilliantly.

I liked how it was used in The History Boys too.

Those people above who are so disparaging about the projections in WIW must be entirely unaware of the technical mastery involved in that show (regardless of whether you approved aesthetically). Dudley's hugely complicated projections allowed a flexibity of approach and viewpoint which could never be achieved with conventional scenery. The idea that the production team went down this route to avoid "painting a few cloths" is frankly laughable and is clearly the opinion of someone who has never tried to incorporate video into a production. Even the simplest use of projection adds a whole new set of problems for the production and technical teams as well as the performers.
Personally I loved the WIW designs but clearly they were not to everyone's taste...

Seb

My reaction to its use there was "Oh dear, poor old Trevor jumping on the bandwagon with video - how old hat". Same as when Nicholas Hytner used it in Henry V. I think it must have been in use for a decade or so before that. "Julius Caesar" seems to be play that gets video integrated into it quite often (including the current Stratford version ?).

I think the first time I saw video used as backdrop was in 'Bewilderness' at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 2001, a production fronted by 'The Right Size', Sean Foley and Hamish McColl, and great veteran Freddie Jones.

Ah. Falling back on the old "you can't criticise unless you've done it yourself" argument, are we?

What I said was:

...all the projections said to me was "We can't be bothered to paint some cloths"

(emphasis added). I didn't claim that was actually the reasoning, as I'm sure you're well aware.

The problem with the projections in TWIW was that they were of far too low a resolution to serve as scenery. Had they been shot on 70mm film they might just have been good enough, but as it was they looked fuzzy and ill-defined. Moreover, the intensity of the projector was necessarily low compared with the rest of the on-stage lighting and the result was that the images covered a gamut from white to pale grey. Projecting an image on to a surface that is also lit by scatter from elsewhere simply doesn't work all that well.

On top of that, the frequent swooping around from scene to scene grew tiring. Please don't try to pretend it served any sort of dramatic purpose. It was entirely a "look what we can do" gimmick. They made a point of advertising it.

And finally, what makes you think I was unaware of the technical mastery involved? I am perfectly well aware what it takes to do something like that. But as a member of the audience I have no duty to care about how difficult something is. All that matters is the result. And for me the projections utterly failed to create any sense of location. At no time was I ever unaware that I was watching projections that were blown up way beyond any reasonable resolution. In that sense, which is probably the only sense that matters, it failed. They'd have created a better impression of location using conventional scenery. It was a great technical achievement, but it didn't work as theatre.

i saw the savoy's carousel and that used projection of some sort and i personally felt that it was hit and miss due to some of the projections were really well done and then others just looked cheap and tacky, so i think it depends on the peice and if you do use them try and make them realistic.

There was a phase during which William Dudley's projections were widely used. I appreciate a lot of technical expertise went into them; pity, as I never saw one that didn't look horrible.

Film or video must have been first used in live theatre some time ago, surely? Longer ago than some of us are suggesting, at any rate.

I can't actually remember seeing it before the NT's Henry V in Shakespeare but it must have been around for a while. One I really liked was the NT's Therese Raquin where the husband's death was shown on a film though it was some time before this was made clear to the audience (well those of us who hadn't read the book...).

Did the Tommy Steele Singin' in the Rain use it for the silent films?

Oh, now I remember an earlier one, in the RSC production of Poppy in 1982, in a transformation scene they used a projected film of a girl swimming underwater didn't they ?

Wasn't a scene in Trevor Nunn's famous 1976 Comedy of Errors set in a drive-in movie theatre ? Was a film shown ? Actually film must have been used in plays long before that.

Best use of film I have seen was in Nunn's brilliant 1930s Merchant of Venice where Portia's various suitors were each introduced via a little home movie.

Dudley seems to be obsessed with using projections instead of set. The Coast of Utopia at the National in 2002 (Nunn-directed) used masses of his elaborate spinning projections - by the end of a marathon day my head was spinning too. I loved the plays but the projections came close to ruining them for me.

Then I saw Coast of Utopia in New York, which used projections to a much lesser degree and quite a simple set, and it was SO much more effective and beautiful. I even had a chat with a very friendly Robert Sean Leonard there, in one of the intervals (he'd seen the London production too) about how much better the set was in New York and how we don't go to the theatre to see a film. There was something about that massive show which made everyone chatty. If only to help work out how many people called Nikolai were still alive.

There was the projection in Time, where film of a speaking face was projected on to a dummy head to give the illusion that the head was moving. I didn't see it myself but I heard it was quite effective. For a while the effect was popular in retail displays but it never worked quite as well in that environment, partly because of the ambient light and partly because customers had a tendency to stumble into the dummies and knock them out of position so they were no longer in register with the projection.

and let's not forget Matthew Bourne's version of Dorian Gray that has an ingenious and erotic use of stills pojection and what is meant to be live footage. Very clever and it works brilliantly in the context of the piece, and the video projection, as is not always the case, is sharp and clear and timed to perfection.

A Japanese company staged a revue back in the 50s at the Coliseum and they used film projected onto a screen that took up almost the whole size of the stage, with actors performing in front of it.

A couple of years ago I saw film (or video) used by the Spanish National Ballet in one of the works on the life of Lorca, and it was breathtaking, making clever use of digital and animation techniques, and images taken from Salvador Dali paintings. Many years before that Kenneth Macmillan used film in the ballet "Anastasia", where original newsreel shots of the Romanov family were used effectively.

It worked perfectly with "Sunday In The Park With George", especially where Seurat was creating his great work, so that the changes he made to it were simultaneously made on the set, but less so with "The Hound Of The Baskervilles", where it seemed to be there to liven up an otherwise very dull production.

It really has to be handled with great care, so that it is not just a gimmick, leaving one with the feeling that "I might just as well have gone to the cinema".