Examples Of Flash Mob

Theater is everywhere in our life. Wedding, holiday parade, president election, car race can all be categorized as theatrical events, because of the role playing involved and the presence of an audience. Among all theatrical activities, one is not invented until a decade ago, yet closely related to the ancient theater --- flash mob. Flash mob can be defined as a sudden art performance by a group of suddenly resembled people in front of the public. It, like a theater work, consists of actors, an audience, a production process prior to the performance (selection and coordination of performer, music, stage, costumes, choreography). Although seemingly identical, flash mob lacks profundity and deepness in all aforementioned aspects, and can only…show more content…
Without an audience, the flash mob would merely be a group of people practice dancing, dull and boring. Despite the fact that both theater and flash mob needs an audience, the audience itself is quite different in each scenario. The first difference is that the target audience of the flash mob need not necessarily to be everyone who is watching the show. In a proposal flash mob, the target could exclusively be only one person. In a one that aims at advertising a product, the target would be a selected group of people, maybe students in a school, or commuters at a subway station. In theater, however, the target is supposed to be as widely as possible. Another difference is that the flash mob’s audience does not have choices over what to watch and hence there is a high possibility for them to leave the performance before it ends. In addition to this unstable audience, flash mob also need to take in the noise from the environment, provided that most of their performances are given on the street or at other public places. These disturbances will more or less distract the performance. In contrast, the audience in theater needs to follow the rules and will not talk during the performance. As a result, the focused…show more content…
A director’s role is well described by Wilson and Goldfarb, “While the director is preparing the script and choosing the performers, he or she is also working closely with the scene, the costume, lighting, and sound designers to develop the visual and aural aspects of the production” (125). The counter part of the director in a flash mob is the organizer. In a simple example, the role of organizer can be understood clearly. In 2011, UCLA newsroom reported a successful flash mob proposal happened in the Bruin Plaza at UCLA. Nam Tran, the “director” who was about to propose to his girl friend Vu, chose the scene (Bruin Plaza), the actors (Flash Mob America staff), the costume (casual clothes as disguises), music or sound (his girl friend’s favorite song) all by him self, a work as expansive a director’s (Hewitt, Flash mob helps Bruin pop the question). While the flash mob has the role of director, it is missing an integral component to be considered a true theater --- the script. Without the script, an artistic event will always be one dimension thinner than theater which contains three parts literature, visual and heard