The art of the modern world is visual. Everyday people consume hundreds of images covering screens like so many ancient hieroglyphs. Standing as king of this visual empire is a film of both the silver and small screens. Film is everywhere these days, in stores, in homes, and even in our pockets whether in six second Vines or four-hour epics. However, despite its apparent success and ubiquity, the grand palace of film stands hollow, a fact which becomes inescapable when put in comparison with its forbearer and rival, theater.

Film, for all its achievements and merits both artistic and technical, is most often compared to its estranged parent, theater. Theater and film have always had a tense relationship, the film industry was built off the back of theater; stage actors became the first stars, play directors became film directors, and plays became the basis for the earliest movies. Perhaps most unforgivable though is that film stole theater’s audience. As it grew and developed, stages turned into cinemas and the theater going public turned into popcorn consuming audiences or TV watching homebodies. In the face of technology and the possibilities it brought to film, theater was forced to concede the main and retreat from mass culture.

However, raised capabilities bring with it raised expectations and that is where film stumbles. With a film, suspension of disbelief can only be taken so far and as technology has improved that threshold has only grown smaller as audiences come to demand greater realism. If a film takes place in the south pacific we expect to see tropical islands, if it takes place in Victorian Britain we expect to see top hats and corsets.

Film has grown adept at being able to convincingly build these worlds, but audience desires hem in what film can do to alter or modify characters beyond ‘reality.’ With theater, by contrast, that suspension of disbelief is very high. With only an empty stage to serve as a setting, it is up to the audience to believe that they are watching a scene on a windswept prairie or a Parisian barricade. The absence of realism would appear to be a very serious disadvantage for theater, but in deficiency lays the opportunity. Freed from the constraints of audience expectations, theater can focus more intently on its greatest strength, character performance.

Recently I had the great fortune to attend a production of Hamlet for Shakespeare in the park. The production was enjoyable; Shakespeare is always better seen than read after all, and the actors were superb. However, if one were to apply the standards of believability in film there was one thing that would seem particularly jarring, Hamlet was black. In a movie, Hamlet as the prince of Denmark would likely be cast as white if there was to be any attempt at realism. But theater gets to play by different rules, as long as Hamlet performs his soliloquies and exacts his bloody revenge it matters not whether he is white or black. Hamlet was not the only character this set of rules touched, some characters were gender bent and other gender-fluid, aside from a few changed pronouns it was still the same old Shakespeare.

If anything proves that the performance of a character matters more than their realism it’s the smash hit musical and pop culture juggernaut, Hamilton. Hamilton gives us a reality in which its namesake Alexander Hamilton was a Latino immigrant and George Washington was black. Realistically the audience knows that this is not accurate and yet when the first few notes are played they cease to care because it all seems to work so well. Now there are of course exceptions to how much a character can be changed, Othello, for instance, cannot be white because that would defeat the whole purpose of his character and rob the play of its central conflict.

In the face of a rapidly diversifying world, theater offers a golden chance to showcase that diversity in a way that film has not. The opportunities afforded by lack of realism give theater a chance to branch out and experiment to provide a new world image within the bounds of the traditional and familiar, like black Hamlet. Of course, we may hope that film and television will learn from theater’s boldness and work to develop more diversity in roles and to ensure that those roles went to individuals of color, as that would truly be realism in today’s America.