Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

Taymor contrasts the mediums’ strengths: film excels at photographic realism and controlled perspective, while theater can operate more freely in metaphor, symbol, and nonliteral stage imagery. By calling theater “far superior” in “poetry” and “abstract poetry,” she suggests that live performance can sustain ambiguity—objects can stand in for ideas, time can compress or expand in front of the audience, and meaning can arise from ritual, movement, music, and design rather than plot mechanics. The statement also reflects an artist’s preference for the audience’s active imaginative participation in a shared space, where the visible artifice of theater can become a virtue, enabling heightened, dreamlike expression that doesn’t need to be explained by realism.