Final thoughts

Sadly, April is over, and my month of blogging about how theater can change the world must come to an end. I had a lot of fun with this topic and didn’t even come close to writing about all of the great organizations and artists using theater in innovative ways to teach, heal, and in other ways make the world a better place. I wish that I could have addressed all the companies and issues that people suggested I write about. For example, Hazen Markoe suggested via a thread on the Callboard forum that I explore using theater in protests and demonstrations. I wish that I had more time or I would definitely have liked to look at some examples of how this has been done to great effect. I remember some fantastic performances during the RNC that I could have used as an example. A number of people pointed me toward different educational topics such as GTC Dramatic Dialogues. There are so many organizations utilizing theater to teach various subjects, which attests to how naturally the two go together. Another friend of mine had some fantastic suggestions of people she knows using theater to help society: using performance to help with end of life transitions, and using theater to transform and re-create/re-imagine society by viewing political science through a performative lens. The enthusiastic feedback that I got working on this topic just goes to show how much it resonates with people- theater artists in particular. I think to be an artist, you have to have a certain pathos with the world. Sympathy, sensitivity, honesty—these are traits required of theater artists, but also they are traits of people that truly care about their fellow human beings on this earth. One issue that came up for me writing the most recent post is whether delving into these alternative uses for theater take away from the value of theater in its traditional form. That is, does the growing practice of using theater as a tool for medicine, for teaching, etc, somehow negate the experience of theater in its traditional form? I don’t think so. I think there is room for both. Certainly going to see a regular old play can be a transformative experience in itself, but there is also room, given the qualities of theater that lend itself toward human connection and communication, for it to be used in a multitude of tangibly beneficial ways.