are we watching plays — or rehearsals for movies?

There’s a quiet shift that many theatergoers feel but don’t always name: some contemporary plays seem to behave like films that haven’t yet found their camera. Dialogue drives them, scenes cut quickly, locations multiply and the stage starts to feel like a placeholder for something more “cinematic.” It isn’t necessarily a flaw — but it does change what theater is doing.

Let me sketch the forces behind that feeling, and then point to a few examples where it’s especially visible.

Film grammar has seeped into playwriting

Writers today grow up saturated in film and television. Naturally, they internalize that language:

• short, clipped scenes

• rapid location changes

• dialogue that carries plot rather than tension in space

A play begins to feel like it’s cutting rather than unfolding.

Example: This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan

• Almost entirely dialogue-driven

• Naturalistic, film-like pacing

• Feels like an indie movie set in one room

Lonergan is a filmmaker, and the play often reads like a script waiting for close-ups.

The dominance of naturalism

Modern theater often privileges “real people talking like real people.” That tends to flatten theatricality — less stylization, less physical storytelling, more conversational realism.

Example: The Flick by Annie Baker

• Set in a movie theater—ironically about film culture

• Long stretches of silence, but when dialogue comes, it’s hyper-naturalistic

• Could easily translate into a quiet, observational film

What keeps it theatrical is time and stillness — but its bones are cinematic realism.

Economic and production pressures

Film and TV dominate the cultural economy. Many playwrights are also screenwriters (or want to be), and writing something “adaptable” isn’t accidental.

Producers, too, often favor:

• small casts

• simple sets

• linear storytelling

All of which align neatly with screenplay structure.

Example: Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan

• Tight, film-ready scenes

• Clear arcs and reversals

• Dialogue that could drop into a TV drama with minimal change

The loss (or avoidance) of theatrical metaphor

Older or more overtly theatrical works lean into what only theater can do:

• abstraction

• symbolic staging

• heightened language

When those recede, what’s left can feel like “just dialogue in a room.”

Compare with Angels in America by Tony Kushner

• Actors double roles openly

• The angel crashes through the ceiling

• Time and space behave theatrically, not cinematically

It resists being a screenplay because it depends on stage imagination.

Scene construction that mimics editing

Some plays are structured like a series of cuts rather than continuous presence.

Example: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

• Two acts function almost like before/after edits

• Sharp tonal shifts

• Dialogue-heavy realism

It’s theatrical in design, but the rhythm feels editorial — like a cut across decades.

So what actually makes something feel “like a screenplay”?

When a play leans heavily on:

• Dialogue as primary action (rather than bodies, space, or image)

• Linear, filmic structure

• Naturalistic speech and behavior

• Minimal theatrical transformation

… it begins to resemble film without the camera.

A gentler conclusion

It’s worth saying: this isn’t necessarily decay. It’s convergence.

Some of these works are excellent precisely because they borrow cinematic intimacy. And sometimes the accusation — “this feels like a screenplay” — really means: I’m missing the sense that anything could happen here that only theater allows.