Plays have been around since civilization first started. There are plays still being performed such as of Shakespeare that have been performed for centuries, of which, truth be told, the play as it is today of Shakespeare, is not the same play that was performed centuries ago, or even necessarily a decade ago, because directors, set designers, playwrights, editors, the players, and the like, all have their place and their input to bring forth, along with the salient fact that no real creative personage desires to carbon copy what has come before, but rather desires to use the source material as a template to create thereby their own vision and spin of a particular play.
There are those plays which have been on Broadway, or on a tour of cities for Broadway shows, that have been enticing audiences for decades, of which, while an argument could be made that audiences love the familiar, because they can identify with what they have previously heard and seen, which thereby brings them comfort, that though doesn’t seem as if it should be the only thing about how a play should be presented, because it limits the director’s hand, and doesn’t adapt to the fact that audiences are subject to change over time, nor does it make the attempt to make the play better or more relevant.
Look, it has to be said, there isn’t any fixed rule that necessitates that a play has to be the same thing, ad nauseam. Rather, plays that are currently on Broadway, should be subject to change, of which, that change shouldn’t have to wait until there is a revival of a given play which hasn’t been performed in that theatre for several years, but rather there should be a pathway for plays to have more than one current version, so that the audience and the performers of that play, aren’t doing essentially she same thing every performance, by acting and reading the same lines, again and again and again.
Indeed, there is a lot to be said about having variations to plays, as a purposeful thing, because as much as a given person might have a favorite food, or some favorite clothes, they aren’t going to keep wearing or eating the same thing every single day. So too, those that are an integral part of the show aren’t necessarily going to desire to perform the same thing in the same way, and still find it to be fresh after hundreds of performances, but rather they would appreciate the opportunity to have a variation in how the play is acted and performed.
All of the above signifies that the audience does not need to see the same play that was performed yesterday or that will be performed tomorrow, but should be given the chance to see the play in a format, that is subject to change, in which, the acts are interpreted differently with different lines and different staging, which will enliven many of those in the audience, to remind them that the players are real, and the story so being told is done in real-time, making this a medium that is superior to that which has been recorded and cannot be changed.