1. Simultaneity. Simultaneity works better on stage than on film. That could be of worlds, but it can also just mean that you can watch two people reacting to something more easily onstage...because the audience can direct their focus as they choose.
2. Inability to escape. On stage, you are two people trapped in a room. With fifteen or five hundred or however many people are in your theater. The stage does the LONG ARC of a scene better than other media.
3. "Magic with the wires showing" (to steal from Kushner) -- you can see the magic, and the trick, at the same time onstage (ie having someone "fly" on visible wires or by swinging them around on a ladder. Which ties into:
4. Conjuring (to steal from Steven Dietz). Steven says "Film shows...theater conjures" Theater is still the storyteller's great medium. You can sit a person on stage and listen to them talk for three hours and still have had a brilliant night at the theater, where you've gone through thirty years and six countries, without even necessarily changing a light cue.
To be continued...
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