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I recently read in The Stage that J.K Rowling is bringing the Harry Potter world out of the books and onto the stage. ‘Hmm’ I thought to myself when I read it. Rowling states that the play, The Cursed Child, is not a prequel to the series. Yet no matter what it is I can’t help but feel that it’s going to be constantly compared as one.

There’s a very good reason why I bring this up: I worry that theatre and film are slowly becoming ‘top spot’ rivals in the modern arts world. Films are more accessible and can reach huge audiences quickly, but theatre has a very personal and organic feel about it; a bigger sense of occasion. Theatre and film are separate mediums with the same artistic values. I’m worried people will see this new transformation as a ‘versus’, rather than ‘an extension of’ venture. There should be no ‘top spot’ in the arts, there should only be choices.

We experience the theatre in four dimensions: visually, aurally, spatially and that extra little something that comes with a live performance, that buzz which is really hard to describe. It offers spontaneity and the feeling that every performance is different because of a multitude of factors, such as the dynamic of the audience or an actor’s health and focus. In comparison, the film world has time for many takes, the chance to come back to a scene and to tweak things in the edit suite.

Some things can only live in the film world. Take your typical disaster movie like 2012. My opinion on the film as a whole is neither here nor there, but the principle of using camera angles and a lot of rendering to orchestrate a visually explosive experience still stands. Likewise, in Harry Potter there are wizards that vanish in the blink of an eye, huge monsters and those electric wand duels. Is that all going to be on the stage? I doubt it, unless they cast Penn and Teller.

For me, Rowling’s worldwide hit franchise was defined by its leap from novel to film. The thing is, is that now the stage version, whether it likes it or not, will be in some ways judged against its older, film brothers. In comparison, had the play happened before the films there would have been a smoother transition to the big screen. Why? As I said: film and theatre are slowly being viewed as competitors rather than alternatives.

Unfortunately I never took Divination as a school subject (that’s being taught how to predict and read the future in the world of Hogwarts) so I cannot say for definite if this new offspring of the Potter story will be a hit or a flop My estimate is that this thing could be a hit purely because it’s already a famous franchise, yet the popularity surrounding the films could leave the magic of a live theatre experience well and truly stupefied.