We can go to the theatre to see a play or an opera.  We can to the MCG to see a footy or cricket match.  In either case, we are going to see some drama – and, usually, the more dramatic it is, the better. 

There is at least one major difference.  In a play or opera, people perform the parts that have been written or composed for them.  The end is already determined.  That is not the case in sport – you don’t know until it is over how it might end – who will win; or if there may be a draw.  That difference alone makes the sporting event more dramatic.  (And, sadly, it means that people may want to gamble on the outcome.)

There is usually one other difference.  Most people going to watch footy or cricket do so because they support, and want to be seen to support, one team in the contest.  There is something both tribal and communal in this – and some of the ritual some still get from religion.  This sense of belonging is usually harmless, but it can get very ugly.  Fortunately, we in Australia usually get spared the worst of the downside.

So, there are major differences in the drama that people expect to get in the theatre or at the MCG.  Their involvement is likely to be far more intensely real in one rather than the other.  And partly for that reason, many more people prefer one kind of drama to the other.

Most people are able to mix, or at least tolerate, patronage of both forms of drama.  Some cannot do so.  Some patrons of the theatre look down on those who go to the footy or cricket.  Many of the latter just have not got round to going to the theatre for any purpose.

Mixing patronage of the two has never been a problem for me.  If you are presented with a smorgasbord, you are in my view a dill if you do not at least sample the lot.  On one day I saw both the Melbourne Storm and Cosi fan tutte.  That may have struck patrons at either show as odd – that was, I think, their misfortune.

The two kinds of drama are very different, but they have something in common.  They involve tests of character – and very public tests.  For all the money and hoopla, someone has to go out and deliver all their acquired skill and magic – when failure will go very hard on all involved.

Now, partly because of age, and partly for other reasons, I will not now go to see many more kinds of either drama live. 

With theatre, as in Shakespeare, you can use three avenues – reading, listening, or watching on television or the big screen.  My preferred course is to listen with the text open in front of me.  Because I do not read music, that access is not open to me with opera.  I can listen or watch.

With twentieth century music, I need time – repeated exposure – to condition myself.  I have recently been doing just that with Britten and Janacek.  And I have been assisted in both with DVD reproductions from the stage of the highest quality. 

More than thirty years ago, Moffat Oxenbould of the AO advised me to see Britten’s Billy Budd at Covent Garden because I should hear an opera in my own language (and the piece was so modern that they had not yet spoiled it.)  That was very good advice. 

Now I have Opus Arte DVDs of Peter Grimes (La Scala), Billy Budd (Glyndebourne), and Midsummer Night’s Dream (Gran Teatre del Liceu).  And just arrived is Jenufa (Asmik Grigorian at Covent Garden). 

Each of these is just about flawless – including the acting (which you must have on this medium).  I cannot recall one person holding the whole show as does Asmik Grigorian.  Each is a play with music made specially for that script.  (And there is a bonus in Jenufa in the Scottish tenor who plays Laca.)  And the three Britten works were written in my language.

It would be silly to say that an Italian gets as much from Hamlet in Italian as I do in English.  And it would be equally silly to say that I get as much from Rigoletto in subtitles as an Italian does in his own language. 

And this issue becomes acute with Janacek, because he studied his own language and moulded the music to match it.  It is as well to remember that when we get a work in translation, we get it trusting in an intermediary – and not as its creator intended it.  It is I think notorious that Goethe and Pushkin – and Dante – do not suffer translation gladly.

Fortunately, I do not have to confront these demons in most sports.  And that is just one reason why I find the sports form of drama so much more compelling and involving than the theatrical forms.  You can savour just some of the other reasons if I reflect back on Peter Thompson at the British Open, Hoad and Rosewall in the Davis Cup, the world titles of Rose and Famechon, the America’s Cup, Cathy Freeman in Sydney – or how just the other day, Sam Kerr and the Matildas changed the world view of a whole generation.  (There was a very revealing photo.  Two hardened AFL coaches had just finished a tough match and had stopped to watch the Matildas on TV.)

And that’s before I get to cricket and footy played by people in my colours.  Then, I am afraid, even Shakespeare and David Williamson have to give way.

Well, these are matters of impression – or taste, perhaps.  But I suspect that Plato would have been with me – he thought that all art was inferior as being just imitation – art as we experience it, was for Plato an illusion, a collection of mere appearances, like reflections in a mirror or like shadows on the wall of a cave.

Tell that to the opener who has just been decked by the first ball of the match – or to the full back who did not adhere to the advice of the Plugger about holding his jersey – and waking up in a very different place indeed. 

Or the Demon supporter on that night in Perth in 2021. 

Or the young Australian barrister who saw Lillee trap that little Knott dead in front to end the Centenary Test.  And watched Thommo put the fear of God into the rest of them.

There are downsides to being Australian – but there up many and great upsides.