Anintermission, also known as aninterval in British and Indian English, is a break between parts of aperformance or production, such as for atheatrical play,opera,concert, orfilm screening. It should not be confused with anentr'acte (French: "between acts"), which, in the 18th century, was a sung, danced, spoken, or musical performance that occurs between any two acts, that is unrelated to the main performance, and that thus in the world of opera andmusical theater became an orchestral performance that spans an intermission and leads, without a break, into the next act.[1]
Jean-François Marmontel andDenis Diderot both viewed the intermission as a period in which the action did not in fact stop, but continued off-stage. "The interval is a rest for the spectators; not for the action," wrote Marmontel in 1763. "The characters are deemed to continue acting during the interval from one act to another." However, intermissions are more than just dramatic pauses that are parts of the shape of a dramatic structure. They also exist for more mundane reasons, such as that it is hard for audience members to concentrate for more than two hours at a stretch, and actors and performers (for live action performances at any rate) need to rest.[2][3] They also afford opportunity for scene and costume changes.[4] Performance venues take advantage of them to sell food and drink.[4]
Psychologically, intermissions allow audiences to pause theirsuspension of disbelief and return to reality, and are a period during which they can engage critical faculties that they have suspended during the performance itself.[2][4]
The term "Broadway Bladder" names "the alleged need of aBroadway audience to urinate every 75 minutes".[5] Broadway Bladder, and other considerations (such as how much revenue a theater would lose at its bar if there were no intermissions), govern the placement of intermissions within performances, and their existence in performances, such as plays, that were not written/created with intermissions in mind.[5]
The plays ofWilliam Shakespeare were originally intended for theater performance without intermissions. The placement of intermissions within those plays in modern performances is thus a matter for the play's director.[6] Reviewer Peter Holland analyzed the placement of intermissions in 1997:
Many modern productions of Shakespeare plays have thus eschewed the introduction of an intermission, choosing instead to perform them straight through, as originally intended.[6]
The intermissions inKabuki theater can last up to an hour. Because this often results in people returning to their seats several minutes after the performance has resumed, playwrights generally take to writing "filler" scenes for the starts of acts, containing characters and dialogue that are not important to the overall story.[8]
In theNoh theatrical tradition, interludes called nakairi are staged between the first and second halves of a performance, during which timekyōgen actors sum up the plot or otherwise further the action through performances known as aikyōgen. These interludes also give the main actors a chance to change costumes and rest.[9][10]
Intermissions in early films had a practical purpose: they were needed to facilitate the changing ofreels.[11] WhenLes Amours de la reine Élisabeth (The Loves of Queen Elizabeth), starringSarah Bernhardt, opened on July 12, 1912, in theLyceum Theatre inNew York City, the four reel film was shown in four acts, with an intermission at each reel change.[12]
The technology improved, but as movies became progressively longer, the intermission fulfilled other needs. It gave the audience a breather, and provided the theater management an opportunity to entice patrons to its profitableconcession stand. A well-known 1957 animated musicalsnipe suggested, before the main feature in theaters and during intermission atdrive-ins, "let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat". During the3D film trend of the early 1950s, intermissions were a necessity because even though many theaters used two projectors that could skip intermission by shifting from one reel to the other, 3D films required the use of both projectors – one for each stereoscopic image – and so needed an intermission to change the reels on both projectors.
The built-in intermission has been phased out of Hollywood films, the victim of the demand to pack in more screenings and advances in projector technology which make reel switches either unnoticeable or non-existent (such asdigital projection, in which reels do not exist).[13]
Despite the phasing out of intermissions in the United States, they have remained prevalent in India. There is a mass reluctance to abolish intermissions as they bring a large revenue to cinemas through customers buying snacks during these periods.[14] The filmsSangam andMera Naam Joker had two intermissions each.[15] Very few Indian films have been screened without intermissions, includingDhobi Ghat,[14]Delhi Belly,[16]That Girl In Yellow Boots[17] andTrapped.[18] Forced intermissions are common during screenings of western films in India.[14]
Indian films shown in cinemas in the United Kingdom also commonly include intermissions,[19] yet in the United States and Canada, these films play from start to finish without any pauses in between.[20] Many Indian films released on DVD include the "intermission" card for cinematic screening.[21]
In theaters screening Bollywood and Tamil films in Massachusetts, USA, exhibitors sometimes decide to skip the intermission, which leads to consternation among the audience.