Theatre enabled a shift from “I’m sorry for your loss” to “I feel your pain” and so seeded the ground for the development of Democracy

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York City, is one of a number of eminences to have pointed out the correlations in time and place between the establishing of the theatre and the development of democracy. He goes to Ancient Greece for his case in point: within a generation of the birth of the former around 550 BC, Periclean Athens had established the foundations of government by the people (demos).

There were other factors in place, too: Athens could teach a thing or two to Reformation Europe about the value of productive wealth over the privileges of birth, and the ascendancy of service to the state as being admirable above personal wealth however it had been accumulated. But the point made by Eustis and his allies in advocating for the impact of the theatre’s development on civilisation relates to a simple but profound shift in attention by audiences in the public arena.

Before “the shift” there were a variety of ways in which a performer could divert an audience and each of these ways or forms was predicated on an understanding of Me Here, You There. I could be delivering a speech, or telling a story, or performing a dance, or singing a song. In all these instances, the presumption was that I had something to display, or impart, and the audience could sit there with arms crossed, pre-existing likes and dislikes secure, and wait to be impressed.

“The shift” acknowledged those crossed arms as emblematic of a barrier between the performer and an audience directly invested in the granting or withholding of approval. The action was in a sense “in their face” – up close and personal. What changed was to invite a dispassion that comes from a little distance as performer became a plural, acting out before the audience a scene, a moment of passion, a flaring of conflict, an argument of pros and cons. It invited the audience to witness without commitment a drama played out by two or more people in a way that afforded them a chance to consider and balance points of view without risk of personal loss or compromise. Greater distance enabled a cooler disposition and the release of greater understanding, even empathy, for the drama in which the performers (and their passions) were embroiled.

Being able to see and acknowledge without pressure another person’s point of view is the start of all manner of advances in the history of humanity. We evolve from primates beating each other with sticks to inventing printing presses and conceiving the Scientific Method; from grunting brutes howling at the moon to Prospero’s gentle sigh that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.””

While politicians preach national unity, too seldom do people “feel the love” just because someone says they should. The triumph of theatre, from Greece of the Ancients to Reformation London, was in conveying a sense of a shared journey and a credible belief that what can be imagined in hope can be realised in a better life.