The healing power of theater: part 2

By Lee A. Davies

Last issue we addressed the evidence for the health value of live theater, especially during stressful times. This week we take a deeper dive into specific ways that attending live theater can have a positive impact your well-being. With credit to freelance writers Nicole Hilbig, Ghessica De Leon and Adrienne Wyper, who frequently write on theater arts and health, here are eight benefits of going to the theater, and the influence it has on the audience:

1. Theater Leads to a Better Understanding of the Drama

The theater gives us, through its strong staging power and the live experience, a new perception potential in which further perspectives open up for us. This gives spectators a diverse understanding of the drama and the plot as well as the characters.

In addition, research has shown that students who attend a live production of a play they are reading in school have a significantly better understanding of what is on the page.

2. Theater Improves Attention Ability

In a play, we cannot pause and rewind if we did not understand something immediately, like in a film. We are forced to listen and consciously get involved in the exciting staging, to concentrate more and, in particular, to observe and analyze the gestures, facial expressions and the spoken word. In these ways we consciously strengthen our senses and can perceive, grasp and understand the play in a much more diverse way – and without distraction from the outside.

3. Theater Is a Natural Form of Self-Expression and Creativity

The theater enables a mode of expression that corresponds to the natural urge of humans, even if this subsides with age. It is natural to use your physical expression on emotional outburst; no one can show emotions without the body being involved.

Theater, with its special form of self-expression, actually complements the roles we all play in everyday life.

4. Theater Opens the Mind and Imagination

Everyone experiences a theater production according to their own values and ideas, regardless of how strongly the director has given a picture. The form of representation at the theater always leaves room for creative, imaginative worlds of thought and interpretations.

5. There is Immediacy Only in the Theater

The immediacy that we spectators experience live, how the characters express their feelings with words and immediately process them, let us feel the power of action with every word. Perceiving the interactions of the people live is fascinating and is unique to the theater.

6. Theater Promotes the Emotional Experience

The fact that the viewer concentrates particularly on what is happening in the theater itself stimulates the ability to perceive. As spectators, we perceive every gesture, facial expression or action, every word, every scream and every emotional expression much more strongly than in other media. As a result, we experience emotions in the actors and consequently also in other people much more directly and learn to assess them better.

We get a better sense of minor internal emotional changes, both from ourselves and from others, and can react to them much faster. Live theater strengthens our empathy and sensitivity, for which we are often very much appreciated, especially by our fellow human beings.

7. Theater Promotes Tolerance and the Social Structure

When we experience discriminatory or unjust topics live on stage, an event in which we cannot intervene, we learn to perceive such moments more consciously and to be more open-minded in dealing with our fellow human beings.

Empathy is a person’s ability to relate to one another, whether it is the other person’s feelings or his thoughts. According to a study made by Joelle Arden for the International Conference on Performing Arts in Language Learning, the capacity to share, react, and understand the lived experience of others through performance could increase one’s emphatic levels and lower sensitivity to rejection.

Theater is one of those means to appeal to human emotion. What separates live theater from a television program or a movie is that audiences consume and share emotions in real-time with actual, flesh-and-blood human beings – the performers.

8. The Theater Influences Our Character and the Way We Think

The psychologist Gustave Le Bon explains in his work “The Psychology of the Crowds,” from 1895, how strongly the theater can exert an influence on us. That reason is our emotionality. As spectators, we are left to the atmosphere of the theater room. It takes us under its spell and leaves us to our very own instincts and feelings.

The more we get involved in the staging, the easier it is for the thoughts and emotions to overcome us. We experience the unheard of, experience injustice, experience love, experience grief, experience happiness and joy.

According to researchers, the effects of seeing a play or a musical aren’t just emotional; they are physical too. Watching shows and musicals is a great way to raise your heartbeat without ever leaving your seat, say scientists. According to research, watching a live performance can have the same impact on your heart as almost half an hour’s cardio exercise.

Based on research commissioned by major theater organizations, the audience’s focus on the events on stage puts them into a state of "flow" — a sense of total engagement and concentration that’s associated with positive feelings such as happiness and fulfillment.

And being part of that has the same benefits as being part of a community – if only for a couple of hours – heightening the impact because we have a sense of it being a shared experience.

So put down your phone, stop streaming, never mind the SM posts – and join the experience of live theater. There’s nothing, literally nothing, like it!

Thank you all for your patronage The Sharon Playhouse’s record-breaking 2023 season. And stay tuned for announcements about upcoming productions and the 2024 season. For more information – and to make a donation to help us keep you mentally and physically fit healthy – please go to www.sharonplayhouse.org.

Lee A. Davies is a member of the board of directors of The Sharon Playhouse and a resident of Cornwall Bridge.

Next Week: The Direct Impact The Sharon Playhouse Has on Our Community