November 17, 2007 - Live, But Only in New York, It's Saturday Night!

At 11:30 ET tonight, for the first time in two weeks, the show Saturday Night Live will go on. But only in New York, as a staged Writers Guild of America benefit at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Michael Cera, of Superbad and formerly of Arrested Development, is scheduled to be the guest host of this sold-out event - and though nothing's confirmed, it's rumored that most, if not all, of the SNL cast will be there.

At the same small theater on Monday night, another NBC series with SNL roots, Tina Fey's 30 Rock, will present a "live" episode of that series as another WGA benefit show. Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski all are expected to perform, but only for the lucky audience members who get through the door.

This concept, of course, takes the idea of a mass medium and flips it to the other extreme, making it among the most exclusive of entertainments. Krakowski, a Tony winner for Nine and a Broadway baby even before her appearance in the Roundabout revival of Company, is no stranger to performing live on New York stages. For the others, it harkens back to standup comedy or improv groups - but this idea of performing television series as a live stage show, it's an uncommon occurrence.

Maybe it shouldn't be.

I'm not talking about the type of camp comedy as typified by The Real Live Brady Bunch stage show. I'm talking about thinking of TV as a true theatrical resource.

Once, when interviewing Peter Falk, I suggested to him that he and, say, Patrick McGoohan should get together and do a limited-run Broadway show based on one of their classic Columbo episodes. Falk's eyes lit up - well, one of them did, anyway - and he broke into a wicked smile.

"Boy," he growled appreciatively. "We could make a lot of money."

Nothing came of it - but Falk was right.

Think of the shows, new and old, that could follow the SNL and 30 Rock lead and generate big crowds - and lots of money for the striking writers' fund. Take over some Broadway houses on Monday night for bare-bones performances, or even Encores!-style readings, using old TV scripts (by writers!) and featuring stars of those shows (who aren't working because of the strike!). Find other venues on the West Coast, and connect with your TV audience a few hundred people at a time.

The cast of Frasier, certainly, could do a Broadway mounting proud, picking a couple of old scripts and performing them as a two-act play. And a few years ago, when I saw the cast of The Simpsons do a script reading at the Aspen Comedy Festival, the crowd went absolutely nuts. In addition to staging a strike, these TV writers, and the actors sympathetic to their cause, should be hitting the stage.

They should be filming their performances on digital video, too. That way, when the strike is settled and the writers get a share of profits from DVD sales, they can add the live performance clips as bonus material on their boxed sets - and actually benefit from it.

That way, it's a benefit in more ways than one.