6: Conclusion- The Audience

Theatre as a Shared Human Practice

Human beings are endlessly interested in what other humans are doing. Across cultures and histories, we have gathered to witness one another around fires, in village squares, temples, courtyards, purpose-built theatres, and repurposed spaces. We are hardwired for spectatorship and performance. We use our bodies to tell stories of love and loss, warning and wonder, grief and joy. Through performance we attempt to explain to ourselves and each other what being alive in this moment means—individually and collectively. Theatre is a uniquely human practice. It is part of our inheritance. Long before ancient Greeks carved the Theatre of Dionysus into the side of the Acropolis or ancient Egyptians chiseled the script for “The Triumph of Horus” into the walls of the Temple of Edfu, communities across the globe enacted stories through ritual, dance, song, and imitation. From the Sanskrit dramas attributed to Kālidāsa to the court spectacles of the Ming dynasty, from the sacred performances of the Yoruba peoples to the virtuosic dances of Japanese Nōh, theatre helps us remember, question, celebrate, and resist. Though its forms differ, the impulse to gather and witness remains constant.

Over the course of this book, you have encountered four key theatrical roles: the playwright, the director, the performer, and the designer. These roles have existed in various forms throughout the global histories of theatre, reaching as far back as human memory serves and perhaps even farther. In some traditions, one individual embodied all of them, becoming storyteller, director, performer, and designer; in others, they were distributed across a community. In the contemporary moment, these roles have become more professionalized and their boundaries more defined. Contracts, unions, professional training programs, and institutional theatres have clarified responsibilities and established standards of practice. In doing so, modern theatre distinguishes itself from ritual and communal performance even as it continues to draw on these traditions for inspiration. These four roles do not function in isolation. An ecosystem of hundreds and sometimes thousands of collaborators support them: stage managers who maintain order and continuity; producers who secure resources; dramaturgs who contextualize meaning; technicians who build and program light and sound; artisans who cut, weld, stitch, sculpt, and paint; administrators and marketers who connect the work to its public. Their labor is often invisible, but essential. All this human effort is intended to serve the most important theatrical role: the audience, you.

You may not intend to pursue a career in the theatre or entertainment industry, but it is my fervent hope that you will become a lifelong theatregoer. Yes, theatre is expensive. Yes, it is difficult to make plans to leave one’s house, find parking, find somewhere to eat dinner, and make it to a 7:30 PM curtain. Yes, not every production will have  the quality of a Broadway hit. But often, the audience’s effort in being present is rewarded tenfold by the generosity of the performers, designers, directors, playwrights, technicians, and others who’ve given their time and energy to create a transformational experience. Theatre scholar Jill Dolan has termed this feeling a utopian performative: “small but profound moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a way that lifts everyone slightly about the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking and intersubjectively intense” (Dolan 2005, 5). You may have experienced this feeling yourself as you sat in the audience of one of the live performances you viewed during this course, or perhaps you’ve felt similarly watching a sibling’s high school play or a Broadway musical. Theatre is a collective emotional experience that can make us feel profoundly connected to people we’ve never seen before and may never see again. That moment, however fleeting, is worth the effort.

What Theatre-Making Teaches Us

In The Adaptable Degree: How Education in Theatre Supports the Economy of the Future, scholar and theatre artist Melanie Dreyer-Lude argues, “Not only is theatre study not ‘optional’ in today’s job market, but the skills theatre students acquire have become some of those most highly sought by employers. We now live in a world in which abilities like interpersonal communication, adaptive problem-solving, and creativity are at a premium” (Dreyer-Lude 2025, 2). Her research overwhelmingly demonstrates that theatre students are using their degrees to gain employment in a wide range of careers and that employers are searching for the skills that theatre is uniquely positioned to teach, such as storytelling, creativity, collaboration, project management, leadership, and so on. Far from serving as an ornament to a more practical education, theatre studies may be essential to competing in a contemporary workforce where supposedly stable career paths have been upended by the development of ever new technologies of mechanization and artificial intelligence.

As students who have had the opportunity to study theatre over the course of this textbook, you may start to understand why. As playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle reminds us, Theatre invites us to reach out to those we don’t agree with, creating dialogue. As director Mikael Burke argues, theatre pushes us to search for the “why” of the thing we are trying to accomplish. As actor Alys Dickerson underscores, theatre instructs us we are enough and we have everything we need to create magic within ourselves. As lighting designer Marcus Doshi advocates, theatre forces us to trust our instincts and rely on our experience. As set designer Wilson Chin offers, theatre helps us imagine new worlds and possibilities. By inhabiting each of these theatrical roles in the classroom, we learn how to apply the skills of the theatre to everyday problems and concerns, term papers, exams, deadlines at work, personal and professional relationships.

Decolonizing the Introduction to Theatre Syllabus

When I set out to decolonize my Introduction to Theatre syllabus in 2022, I naively believed it was a matter of checking off a list:

1.     Undo the singular white male genius myth that defined my own theatre history education.

2.     Avoid the pitfalls of the West and the rest syllabus that foregrounds Western theatre at the expense of telling a global story of theatre’s multiple histories.

3.     Shun the progressive narrative of theatre history.

Instead, I opted for a story that focused on the mimetic impulse innate to all humans by providing a diverse set of contemporary case studies that followed the artistic process, embracing equitable classroom management and grading practices, and focusing on theatre as a live, embodied, collaborative storytelling practice.

As I complete this textbook, I understand more fully the reasons why I hadn’t read a textbook that told the story I wanted about theatre as a shared human practice. I am keenly aware of the numerous ways in which, in seeking to tell a different story, this effort has fallen short and told the same story in perhaps a slightly different way. More work needs to be done to tell the full global story of theatre. I hope that this textbook can serve as a template and an open, online, and freely available resource to support that great future ongoing work of decolonization and indigenization.

References

Colbert, S. (2026) “‘There’s Nothing I Enjoy More Than Acting In The Theatre’ – Ian McKellen Extended Interview.” The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. February 4. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l2RqzVG4ag.

Dolan, J. (2005) Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre. U of Michigan Press.

Dreyer-Lude, M. (2025) The Adaptable Degree: How Education in Theatre Supports the Economy of the Future. Routledge.