The Ringling adopts National Theatre Live screenings

The Greeks invented it. The French made it absurd. Russians made it real. Germans brought romantic scope to the stage. Americans brought sexual attitude. However, it was the English that made theater into a religion.

From Shakespeare and Marlowe to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard, the British stage has been an altar to document and sanctify the compelling dramas and high comedies of the ages. With theater tied to the national consciousness, it comes as no surprise that the highest-quality theaters are publically funded and supported via taxpayers and government grants. The National Theatre, the most prominent contemporary theater in England, is one such company. Founded in 1963, the three-venue complex located in the South Bank district on the Thames River is an international beacon for new works and innovative adaptations of timeless classics.

And thankfully for the Sarasota theater-philes as well as the casual and curious arts patron, the premiere work of the National Theatre has been streaming live and during encore presentations at movie theaters, art cinemas and museums around the world since the summer of 2009. The Ringling, Sarasota’s nexus of numerous forms of visual and performance art, has added the National’s theatrical screenings to its rich art environment this fall.

“Most of what museums do revolves around object-based art,” says Dwight Currie, the Ringling’s curator of performance, “but across the country there is a trend for a time-based art whose conduit of engagement isn’t a gallery.” National Theatre Live joins the Ringling’s ever growing list of event-specific art experiences including the Ringling International Arts Festival, artist and performance residencies, and workshops.

The Ringling invested the time and funds to install the appropriate projection and audio technology in the Historic Asolo Theatre so as to meet the National’s strict technical and immersive requirements. Watching a live theatrical performance in an opulent and aged theater like the Asolo offers this surreal, meta-quality: a frame within a frame.

Currie hopes Ringling’s screening of these world-renowned London productions will not only attract people to the wider museum, but expose younger audiences to a theater experience for the first time through the more approachable and affordable lens of the cinema. Tickets for each performance are $20 for general admission and $10 for students. And at that price, a younger audience can step through this theatrical portal and hopefully begin a relationship with Sarasota’s abundant live theater scene as well as the Ringling.

“We’ve only done one so far, Danny Boyle’s production of ‘Frankenstein’ starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, in October and the most exciting thing for me is that it was one of the youngest audiences I’ve seen in Sarasota,” says Currie.

The next two screenings reflect the electrifying format and nature of the National Theatre’s dramatic fare. On Nov. 14, Eurpides’ “Medea” is reborn with a new adaptation by Ben Power with Helen McCrory (“Skyfall” and “Harry Potter” films) as the titular heroine. And on Dec. 12, David Hare’s 1995 family drama “Skylight” starring Billy Nighy and Carey Mulligan will fill the screen of the Historic Asolo Theater. At the beginning of the new year, productions of  an original, mature work “JOHN” as well as classic favorites like “Treasure Island,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “King Lear” will grace the Ringling’s screen.