“The theater is the only institution that has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed.” – Nobel prize winning author John Steinbeck.
For centuries, live theater has been a central source of entertainment around the world. It has produced works that have gone down in history and shaped generations of people. However, it has become significantly more and more underappreciated as an art form. Some people (cough cough, Timothee Chalamet) think that no one even cares about it anymore.
I grew up in the theater. It is where I first learned how to sing, how to truly connect with others, and how to pursue things that matter to you. Performing has been such a key aspect of my life, so much so that I am pursuing it as a career. Millions of other people around the world have also decided to make theater their entire life, pursuing it in countries all over the world. If that is true, then it must mean that theater has something important enough to pay attention to.
Theater is the one and only art form that will never die. It has an effect on people that is unlike anything else. People should care about it and realize the true importance of it. Live theater should be appreciated because it holds a mirror up to nature, revealing the true beauty of humanity and empathy.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we all strive for human connection on the deepest level. And that is exactly what you experience at the theater. Joshua Speed, junior, speaks on why live theater is so important:
“Theater has all of the arts incorporated with it. There’s costumes, there’s lighting, there’s dancing, singing, acting, etc. There is deep thought that goes into it, and you can really feel that. There is a genuine, authentic connection that you can feel with the people on stage. You can feel the raw emotion along with the actors.”
At its core, theater is an art of empathy and understanding. When you go see a play, you are not only watching a story unfold right before your eyes. You are experiencing it right along with the actors. You are breathing the same air, taking in the same sounds, and feeling the same tension as them.
Although the story is the same each night, every performance is different. Each one is authentic and unedited. The performers interact in real time, and they bring something new to each show. It is one of the only art forms that requires real, in-person human connection among the audience and the performers. Although the script outcome is always the same, the journey of the characters appear different each performance, leaving the audience with memories that can only happen in the theater.
Only in a theater can you experience the feeling of it being so quiet that you can hear a pin drop because of how suspenseful the scene is. Only in a theater can you experience raw, heartbreaking emotion along with the storytellers. These are experiences that are special beyond words, and they will remain with you forever.
Paintings get lost or destroyed. Movie magic ends as soon as the screen is turned off. But theater? It remains. There have been plays written centuries ago that are still being performed today. There are musicals that constantly get revived on Broadway so that new generations can experience them. How special is that? How can we as a society move on from an art form that reflects the beauty of humanity? So, I encourage you: go see a play. Because you truly never know when one might change your life.
