Live or Dead? Televised Theatre and its Audiences in Bali

Abstract

Balinese actors often say they much prefer performing before live audiences than in recording studios. In this chapter I shall examine some of the differences discernible in the same plays as acted in front of Balinese village audiences and as broadcast on Indonesian state television. Balinese theatre involves not just the ad-libbed exchanges between the actors, but also a — less obvious — overlapping dialogue between actors and audience. In a different and little remarked-upon way, the audience also performs. Acting to camera, with or without a tame studio audience, therefore transforms the occasion. In this instance, ‘mediatizing’ is a more complex issue than just the effect of television recording and broadcasting on theatre. For a start, it invites us to consider what is involved in dialogic models of social action and in communication itself.