waste in virtual circulation

It is strange that everyone always speaks of the theatre as the paradigmatically public form of art. For unlike writing, theatre in itself is not made for public circulation: rather, it takes place within a very specific room. Only few people can witness it – even if these few are several hundreds, which is nothing in comparison to any text, or video, or photography, all of which at least imply the possibility of reaching – everyone. In this sense, theatre is always curiously private and intimate, as well as hidden from public view. Street theatre imagines it can counteract this hiddenness, but even theatre on the street is never visible to more than a handful of spectators at any one point, and in this sense theatre always takes place on a small scale. It can never be for the masses; people's theatre (I mean in a vaguely socialist tradition: Volkstheater) can only exist on a qualitative, never on a quantitative level.