Screening from the Met, the NT, or the House: what changes with the live relay

Theatre, opera, and dance all call for distinct performance and viewing practices, but when they are relayed into cinemas (live or faux-live) there tends to be some flattening of this distinctiveness. There are also slippages between elements of the relays in terms both of their original form and the adjustments made in the course of recording for relay. The changes made in the movement from performance space to cinema reception are adaptations that are in the first instance technically motivated rather than dramaturgically initiated. Some, such of the use of camera angles unavailable to theatre audiences, or time spent backstage during intervals, contribute to the creation of a different relationship to the play, opera, or dance, while not necessarily always making the relay more like a film. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which the assertions of liveness, of the sameness of the experience, and the difference from filmed or televised productions are sustainable for a range of performance types viewed close to the source of the event and remote from it. It centres on instances from NT Live, but also draw on ones from The Met in HD, NDT in cinema, and the multiple passages of the radio show 'This American Life' first to the stage and then on relay to cinemas