I was fascinated by Britt Salvesen’s description in her essay that “The “spectacle” also included the projector, projectionist, screen, space, and fellow viewers situated in particular arrangements: this defines the apparatus of cinema in the broadest sense, as a concatenation of objects, images, and practices, unfolding in time and space, over and above the small stories portrayed in the films themselves.” (70) As we’ve discussed throughout the past few days, it seems that as much as cinema reached the masses it was an incredibly individualized experience, specific to the film that was watched, the music that accompanied it, and the crowd that sat and watched it. This sort of individualized experience called to mind another theater: that of the playhouse. Like early cinema, theater is subject to the whims of that particular performance even though certain motions are rehearsed, lines memorized etc. Of course, there are huge differences: the actors are not mediated by a screen and the projectionist has been replaced by the director, amongst many other factors. Nonetheless, I’m wondering if putting these two together, the two apparatuses side by side, reveals anything about the other. It strikes me that in both early theater and early cinema there is an emphasis on spectacle, on seeing stories or events played out. It also seems that both were more or less available to the masses from the beginning though of course, particularly in the theater’s case, this changes.  

I also think there’s room in this comparison for the topic of adaptation, explored in Leah Lehmbeck’s essay, specifically the adaptation of paintings into films. In other words, it seems that myths for the Greeks can roughly, and rather simplistically, be compared to paintings for films (of course, there’s a lot of crossover here, as the discussion of Pygmalion and Galatea makes evident). At the heart of my inquiry lies origin stories, adaptation and the nature of the apparatus.

I’m wondering then about this relationship. What can the origins of early theater inform us about the origins of early cinema? Does this deepen our knowledge of the apparatus? And how does adaptation fit into this story?