When you think of musical theater or even theater in general what’s the first thing that pops into your head? If you ask a random person on the street most likely they’re answer will include “jazz hands” or “a cheesy plot line with big smiles.” But if that random kid happened to be a theater kid, you would get an answer that would include how theater has shaped or changed their life in some way or another. Why is that? Why does theater affect so few of us in such a monumental way, but to the rest of the population it’s a useless form of entertainment?
I’ll tell you why. I may be biased, being a self-proclaimed theater geek, but theater has changed my life in a way that I thought no person, thing or idea ever could. Theater is not only an art form or a way to make friends or an ice-breaker. Theater is the gateway to a new form of expression. Theater can be used to impact and affect people’s lives.
The reason why so many theater nerds claim that this “thing” is the most important aspect of their life is because it can change people. It can change ideas. It can impact the world we live in. Think of popular works of theater that have graced the Broadway stages in the past few years. Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, Bare, all seen as very sad and angst-ridden musicals. Yet these pieces of art have been used to change the social norm. They’ve been used as a form of sex education, or to educate audiences on what living with a mental illness is really like, or even why being yourself and loving who you love is okay. These few pieces of theater are just samples of productions past, present, and future that have affected social issues.
The reason the average person sees theater as a waste of time is because they don’t understand what theater can accomplish. By taking passionate people who love what they’re doing and giving them a story that has been injected with feeling and love and letting them create new characters and new settings and a world of their own you can change lives.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that maybe theater nerds aren’t really theater nerds. Maybe we’ve already tapped into something that more people should experience. These stories affect us so greatly and bring us to tears or to unstoppable laughter because they’re delivering messages that so many public leaders are trying to, in a much more accessible way. We fall in love with characters and relationships and places as soon as the lights go down.
So why don’t more people use the theater as a way to make change? It’s been done before and it continues to be done by new writers, composers, and actors. Theater is a living, breathing organism and maybe if we utilized it more, the social issues we have today wouldn’t be so much a problem, but instead the opportunity to search for a new solution.