adaptation is what its about

So much of what we see on stage these days is an adaptation. Same with movies of course. It has been an exceptionally rare case where I thought a book would be better as a movie, a movie as a play, a play as a movie. I honestly cannot remember one instance where I thought that the original would be better served in another media, save for The Godfather.

Now we not only make a movie from a play or book, we then take the movie and make it back into a play. Let me correct myself here. We take a musical and make it into a movie, then make it back into a musical, which will be remade into a film, no doubt, in another ten years. Where is the originality? Is there really nothing else to write about?

The latest in the endless cycle of commercialized spectacle is the High School Musical phenomenon. My Smallers love this thing. It makes me gag. This is a televised musical that is basically Grease updated. After its success on television it was made into the stage version, and the CD, and the book, and the ice show, and the toys, lunch boxes, back packs, you name it. It was in fact created not for artistic value, but for commercial. What can we say about the health of American theatre when the trend is to serve up blockbuster movies on stage?

Take a moment to read this article which is so much more eloquent than I am about this subject. What I love most are Margulies' thoughts about the imagination. Very worth five minutes of your day.