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