Welcome to Desert Theatre Co., a collective dedicated to transformative theatre from the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Please be sure to silence your mobile devices while you’re visiting. And, now, as to the name of this page, why it matters…
The proscenium means, literally, the vertical plane that divides the stage from the spectator (pro = before; scenium comes from the Greek skene, the building at the back of the playing space in a traditional Greek amphitheatre). We’re staking this virtual space out as the dividing plane between Desert Theatre, online, and you, virtual/potential audience. The vertical display in front of you, as you peer through, serves as your passageway in.
In their time, Greek dramatists and theatre-goers peered through their prosceniums purposefully. Theatre was designed to be intentionally socially transformative, and the idea that it would change and uplift society made it practically compulsory. The whole populace of a particular region was expected to attend a Greek tragedy, and, for those too poor to attend, wealthy patrons swept the streets and gathered folks up just prior to the play, and paid entry for them. The performance space borrowed elements of sacred practice, and featured an altar at the fore, for sacrifice to to the god Dionysos. The audience took their tragedy seriously, wept for fated heroines and heroes, and, hopefully, acquired a certain sympathetic wisdom, through witnessing the ruin produced by protagonists’ hubris (pride), to avoid similar mistakes themselves.
The eProscenium Desert Theatre Co. erects here is intended to offer more than just another screen to look through. Though it is an electronic proscenium forced by health and other concerns (in much the same way the British theatre was forced into other media by Oliver Cromwell), and though it may not currently provide the immediacy of players acting in your physical space, it is intentionally intended for change: for transformation of both the aesthetic and the society it mirrors.
Poke around the site menu up top; see what we’re up to.