ABSTRACT
In this chapter the relatively recent cultural phenomenon of electronically mediated broadcast live and captured live theatre performances will be analysed and assessed on its potential and capacity for radically transforming the relationship between theatre and cinema. It will be seen that the long-standing debate about the relative merits and artistic claims of theatre and cinema – as well as the robust oppositional discourse between the two – has been to an extent superseded by this recent cultural and technological innova tion. I will argue the case for broadcast live and captured live theatre trans missions as emblem - atic of Susan Sontag’s aspiration for alternative thinking about the film-theatre interaction; as she contends, ‘what is important is that no definition or character - isation of theatre and cinema, even the most self-evident, be taken for granted’.1
