An Antidote to Digital Dehumanization? Live Theater
One of the researchers put it this way: “Experiencing the live theater performance was extraordinary
enough to overcome group differences and produce a common physiological experience.”
The living presence of the audience is what strikes me as so singular about the theater, why I love working in the theater so much
and why I believe in the particular importance of our beloved form right now.
The theater is an art form scaled to the human, and stubbornly so, relying on the absolute
necessity of physical audience, a large part of why theater is so difficult to monetize.
The situation of all theater, a situation that can awaken in us a recollection of something more primordial, religious
ritual — the site of our earliest collective negotiations with our tremendous vulnerability to existence.
I recently learned that a group of neuroscientists have discovered that watching live theater can synchronize the heartbeats of an audience.
An award-winning playwright argues that the in-the-moment interplay between actors and audience can help us cope with an increasingly virtual world.
A living being before a living audience.
In a world increasingly lost to virtuality and unreality — the theater points to an antidote.