Close up theater – an innovation in stage art studies

Abstract

In this article we will try to offer a new perspective on the theater, and we will try to include the theater in other spaces to create artistic values, including digital technology. Since its beginning, the theater space has been a place to see, to watch, to present, to perceive, to understand. So, in a basic sense, theater has been and is a first pathway. At the core of the theatrical experience – as Peter Brook suggests – is the act of watching and being watched. Throughout the history of Western culture, the theater has been a primitive dance circle, a Greek amphitheater, a church, an Elizabethan stage, a market square, a garage, a street, a front stage theater, a Broadway theater, a theater house university, a restored warehouse or recently, even a digital platform on our laptop, computer, or mobile phone. Close-up theater is a continuation of the conceptual changes that took place with theater spaces – and therefore – with the way of watching theater. In the past decades, Jerzy Grotowski in Poland, Ariane Mnoushkin in Paris, Peter Shuman in Vermont and Peter Brook from Africa in Avignon, France, have organized the theater space in different ways to bring the audience and the actors as close as possible to each.