Why We Watch Plays

Have you ever read a horoscope in the morning paper and been sure it was written just for you? Its terms are ambiguous, its predictions vague: it could apply to any situation, anyone’s life. Its words could be twisted to fit any number of scenarios… yet you believe it can predict your future. “This guy is good,” you say to yourself – “it’s as if he’s looked into my soul! This guy has all the answers!” What do you suppose makes so many otherwise intelligent people so willing to be guided by the words of a Sunday psychic?

We want to believe. We hope against hope, experience, and reason that someone else – someone wiser, stronger, or more powerful than we are – has answers to life’s imponderable questions. Desperate to believe that our lives have some larger purpose – and most of all, that we are not alone in a chaotic and unpredictable world – we will readily accept any explanation – even an imperfect one – that attributes a tangible meaning to our existence. We want to belong – we want to feel that someone out there understands – that someone is looking out for us, and will be there to catch us when we fall. It is the reason that we flock to religious services; it is the reason that we read advice columns, the reason we seek therapy. It is also the reason that propaganda and advertising often have such a powerful and visceral effect on us: sometimes, it is just easier to take someone else’s word for it than it is to make decisions for ourselves (whether the decision in question is as complicated as whether or not we believe in an afterlife, or as simple as which laundry detergent to buy).

This is also the reason why every culture, throughout history, has had some form of public performance. We go to the theater, and to the movies, in search of answers to life’s big questions, as well as for guidance in dealing with our most intensely personal quandaries. What we hope for when we sit down in a darkened theater is that in the conflicts and failures, joys and triumphs of the characters on stage or screen, we will find a parallel to our own daily struggles. If we can identify with these fictional characters and their problems, perhaps we can learn by example how to solve our own problems, and live our own lives. We hope that these stories will work like living parables, providing us with clear illustrations of right and wrong. Unlike real life, in which a conflict or dilemma can often drag on unresolved for an indefinite period of time, plays and movies are rarely more than two or three hours long. These are quick-fix, ready answers: conflict, resolution, and tidy, digestible conclusions in a single sitting.

The parable itself – in this case, the plot – is certainly important: it contains the moral of the story, the message. Perhaps even more important than the message, however, is the medium. The crucial factor in the theater’s power over us – the thing that makes a play or a movie different from a book – is the element of performance. It is by seeing real people (if the acting is good) experiencing and resolving emotional conflict that we are truly able to feel compassion – to understand the characters on a human level. Perhaps the story being portrayed bears no objective resemblance to your own life – but as long as you can find some point of identification with at least one of the characters – some common denominator between the two of you – you can use it as a jumping-off place in working out your own internal conflicts. This is how a crowd of people with very different lives and problems can find itself collectively affected by the same play or movie. If each person in the audience can find his or her own “way in” to the play – his or her own individual point of identification – then each person can experience his or her own individual catharsis.

This idea of catharsis – the dramatic climax of a performance, literally a “cleansing” of the emotional palette – is also a very important one in our examination of the universal appeal of public performance. While we certainly go to the theater seeking answers, there are other, more immediate reasons as well. One of these reasons is, very simply, that we need to relieve the stress of our everyday lives – and the theater is the perfect place to do it. A play or a movie is simultaneously a distraction from the outside world, a forum for quiet meditation, and a vehicle for the kind of emotional enema one might also expect from a therapy session, a heated argument, or a great sermon. The moment of dramatic catharsis – when the characters on stage are finally able to acknowledge and release their emotions – should be as powerful for the audience as it is for the actors: by taking all of our stress, all of our pent-up emotion, and grafting it onto these fictional characters (in other words, by empathizing), we are able to experience a vicarious form of relief when the conflict of the play resolves itself.

Almost as long as there has been human society, there has been some form of public performance. It satisfies an essential need that, while it may be subtler and less tangible than things like food and shelter, is just as necessary to our collective survival. The theater is a church, a circus, a school, a group therapy session: it provides instruction, diversion, and consolation; and at its best, it keeps the peace by allowing us an outlet for emotions that might otherwise get the better of us. It is a non-denominational, non-discriminatory forum that brings us together as humans on an emotional common ground, and perhaps even leaves us a little bit wiser at the conclusion than we were when we began. It is for all these reasons that as long as people go on living together, there will always be a need for public entertainment.