Anyway, the play talks about what it means to be a Canadian artist (among other things) and since that had been the same question I had been wrestling with in the context of my NIDA application, it really felt like true communion, on par with the religious experiences I had back when I was a practicing Catholic. Me, the artists all at the top of their form, the hush of the dark, the sense of others around me, combining to becoming something that was vibrantly alive for a moment. It raised me to an awareness level that was beyond my everyday experience, and it’s that feeling I try to engender in the work that I do.

One can’t get around that theatre was originally religious ritual. I believe that impulse still survives in our communal unconscious.

Hm. I went to the theatre long before I ever set foot in a synagogue or a church. I prefer theatre, but I don’t think I can honestly say that theatre makes me feel closer to god. I go to the theatre because it’s fun. Because I get to see and feel and think things that I don’t normally get to see or feel or think. Because it opens up a window into lives and stories that I otherwise wouldn’t experience. Because sometimes there is free wine at opening night parties.

Are these holy reasons? Is theatre a holy experience? I don’t really care. But when it’s good, I love it.

To me, communion isn’t an act of worship; it’s about finding commonality, feeling a sense of oneness. Too often, I feel disconnected from the people I spend the better part of my days with because we have differing ideologies or priorities or whatever. When I go to the theatre, I find that oneness, that shared humanity, because theatre is an active distillation of the human condition.

Sure, other art forms evoke the human condition and I enjoy them as well, but there’s something about being right there in the same space while the actors are “being” the humanity that I share. On occasion, I’m overcome by emotion at the curtain call, and it has nothing to do with the plot of the play I just watched. It’s a result of a communion with what the actors have just experienced. Honestly, I don’t know how that happens, but it does.

Maybe theatre started when someone realized telling a story wasn’t enough for them; it had to be lived, in the moment.