An ad for the Colorado New Play Summit showing audience members asleep!
Effective therapy doesn’t transform the patient; it only lessens one side of their personality and intensifies another. I believe this is also true of theatre. At the end of a play, the audience isn’t changed, but a part of them has been intensified – Temporally. The next morning most return to their baseline selves. The same true with religion. A convert might leave a chapel, temple, mosque, or gurdwara feeling inspired, but more often than not, they snap back to standard operating procedure once they get home.
Why is effective therapy lasting and theatre and religion temporary? Because the meaning found in the religion and theatre makes little sense in the real world. In Experience and Art, Joseph Wood Krutch writes, “The deepest, most fundamental of human desires is the desire that the universe be comprehensible, meaningful… [Art] is an ordering of the world of experience in such a way as to attribute logic and meaning to that world.” Art is not the real world, it’s a reordering of it, and so, once the art (or religion) is gone so is the logic and meaning create with it.
For example, Death of a Salesman makes about as much sense as transubstantiation. In the play Willy offs himself so his family will get the life insurance money. In the real world, no insurance company will pay if you off yourself and you can be New York Life will investigate. Meanwhile, chemical tests prove that consecrated wine and off-the-shelf Merlot are precisely the same. We believe these reordered realities, and the meanings that come with, only when the magical part of our personally is intensified.
Theatre and religion also share another trait: a pretty dismal track records. Religion has existed for thousands of years, yet people are still fundamentally awful. Sure, crime rates have dropped — but is that thanks to religion or because we’re all being watched by an omnipresent network of security cameras? Technology has accomplished in a few decades what Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism couldn’t manage in millennia — convincing people they’re really being watched.
Theatre’s record isn’t any better. It’s been around just as long, with similarly underwhelming results. When Trump took office, racism, homophobia, and sexism slithered out from under their rocks. In response, playwrights went into overdrive, pounding out scripts to make Americans “aware.” Like Soviet Marxists, they reduced Art to social usefulness as they exposed their deep Freudian wounds. And it worked — for about 90 minutes. Then Trump was reelected — and this time, he won the popular vote. On the other hand, religion succeeded. How do I know? Same answer — Trump was reelected, and this time, he won the popular vote.
So why did theatre fail while religion didn’t? Both are temporary fixes, but religion figured out how to make the magic last. They require hats, beads, Mandiras, crucifixes, prayer rugs, and rituals to keep the audience in the mindset. Those religious hats aren’t fashion statements — they’re reminders of the version of yourself you want to intensify. Alcoholics Anonymous does the same with sponsors you can call between meetings. MAGA members? They just flick on Fox News, and they’re right back in temple.
Now imagine if theatre did the same. After seeing a play, what if you had to check in with the playwright five times a day to make sure you hadn’t forgotten the play’s theme? What if every audience member was assigned a theatre staff sponsor they could call and talk about the play with when racist, homophobic, or sexist urges crept in? Or what if every production came with a hotline? Or, what if we threw away the copyright laws that keeps plays locked inside the dark theatres, ensuring their effectiveness is confined and brief?
Instead, we tried Brechtian alienation, which thrilled lit crits but was promptly forgotten by audiences. We tore down the fourth wall and reasoned directly with the audience — little progress. We made characters talk in rhyme, then realistically — no change. We made them sing and pause like Pinter. We added surrealism, Dadaism, symbolism — more lit crit wet dreams. We dabbled in existentialism, but the audience took no responsibility. Finally, we included trapdoors, pyrotechnics, elaborate costume changes, sparkling chandeliers, and Rhinoceroses, and yet, we have not come up with something as simple and effective as a hat.
Perhaps it’s time to let AI write the plays — it’s going to happen anyway. In the not to distance future Artistic Directors will be able bypass playwright and have Chat GPT write a comedies and dramas using the exact theme, cast and budget they want. Then they’ll be able to dial up the laughs or tears with just a few keystrokes. Perhaps this will give playwrights time see an actual therapist. Not an online one — they’re all controlled by AI.
Or we could continue writing and just admit that theatre is temporary. Write plays knowing that even if we make a splash, the ripple won’t reach the edge of the pool. We may not nudge the world, but we will nudge ourselves. When we write plays we keep ourselves company — the best kind of company. In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm write that we all desire to “leave the prison of our aloneness.”
Playwrights are unique for our solitude releases us from our loneliness. We bring order to the world so we can attribute temporary logic and meaning to it. We may not change the world. We may not make a ripple. But we’re in a wonderful therapy session with our soul. If an audience wants to sit in, they’re welcome. If a theatre wants to toss us a few dimes, we’ll take them. But they aren’t the company we seek. For we write to accomplish something AI can’t, to find personal meaning and logic, and the temporary happiness of wearing a hat.
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