DPI:

Do you have a defined aesthetic prior to seeing a script? What is your aesthetic?

Hal Eagar [1]:

Spectacle is defiantly my aesthetic, I said that maybe the work I do is not exactly the work I like to go see, but even so it's still about creating a bit more spectacle. That's the magic that makes it worth it to go to the theatre. Which brings me to the next thing I was going to say, which is that my aesthetic is not cinematic. On the one hand I hardly ever go to the movies, so I probably have one of the least developed senses of cinematic vocabulary of anyone in this country, let alone people working in video. But all the same it's not foreign to me it is the new language of images, an we use it everywhere. I think a lot of the urge to bring media on stage is to create a cinematic effect, because we think in that visual language, and maybe because the theatre is trying to compete with film. And though I probably do, do that a lot, it's really not my intent, there is no way for even a huge budget theatre to compete with a multi-million dollar film. So what theatre needs to give you is something else. Seeing someone you know on stage is one thing, which I love, but it's not something "media" can bring you.

Seeing someone create illusion in front of you, that you know is illusion and can see through, that is some of the magic of theatre that video can help create. It's important that the illusion is not perfect, and that you can see how it is done. Who would want to watch puppets that so perfectly represented people that you could replace them with actors? It's about knowing you are being fooled. Maybe it makes us feel better about this world where we can't tell reality from fiction; where we can't tell if that woman is really impossibly beautiful, or just well photoshoped. Maybe that clear suspention of disbelief make us feel safe; maybe it makes us feel like we are part of the action ourselves because we can see the artifice but we let it happen anyway and we feel what it would mean if it were true without believeing that it is.

I don't usually have time to think about that sort of thing while I'm working, but this engaged ilusion is what I want, and I think that partnership with a willing audience lies lurking under all theatrical special effects.