Revelation and the Tony Awards

Last night (June 10, 2012) I watched the Tony Awards show. As part of the show, short segments from each of the four musicals nominated for Best Musical were performed.

Even though television/movie drama and live theater are both performance arts, it occurred to me that they are quite different. (And you, reader, probably just responded, “Duh.”) Let me explain.

What I mean is that in TV and movie dramas, in most cases one of the goals is to bring the viewer into the story and make it believable as reality. It may be fantasy or sci-fi, but it still could be fathomed as reality that exists somewhere. Screen dramas can take advantage of camera work to zoom into scenes, or zoom out to take in the big picture. It can quickly shift from one scene to another. Screen dramas are strictly one-way communication: the actors to a passive audience.

Not so with many forms of live theater. There is a stage with the sets and actors. There is the audience. There can be no zooming in, so sets, actions, words, and songs must be exaggerated to emphasize importance. The audience cannot move either, so exaggeration is necessary in order for those in the nosebleed seats to understand what is going on. Another element present in live theater is that the actors, even as they follow a script, can still engage with the audience and vice-versa. The audience is not passive.

That got me thinking (again) about the book of Revelation as drama. When I describe the book as drama, I am thinking about it as live theater. John alone is the very first audience. Throughout the book he interacts with the drama. The book contains activities attributed to John: “I saw”, “I heard”, “I wept”, “I asked”, etc.

The first recipients of Revelation were the next audience. Although they did not have the benefit of seeing the visions as John had, they could still imagine the visions through the words. They could imagine John sitting in the theater, interacting with the activity on stage.

As the newest audience for one of the oldest, continuously running drama of Revelation, we too have the privilege of entering the theater, interacting with the actors, and entering into the story that is unveiled through the words of Revelation.