Illustration by Jennifer Pearson, impressed by a photograph from True Colours Theatre.
Final yr, the U.S. Surgeon Common launched an advisory declaring loneliness a public well being epidemic. “Given the numerous well being penalties of loneliness and isolation,” Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in his report, “we should prioritize constructing social connection the identical approach we now have prioritized different crucial public well being points corresponding to tobacco, weight problems, and substance use issues.” Because it occurs, there’s a pure and time-tested remedy for loneliness that has existed for over 2,000 years: the theatre.
The post-pandemic disaster within the American theatre isn’t over; nonprofits are struggling everywhere in the nation as funding sources dry up and viewers numbers dwindle. This therapeutic medium wants an pressing and beneficiant infusion of cash from state, metropolis or federal governments, or we’ll proceed to see many theatres shut within the subsequent few years. Jobs are being misplaced, doorways are closing.
I want to supply a modest proposal, which, in contrast to Jonathan Swift’s, isn’t a joke. We face a public well being emergency—and we’d like funding from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being instantly. Let’s deal with theatre as a confirmed methodology to stem the tide of debilitating isolation on this nation. Given two joint crises—the loneliness epidemic and the financial implosion of the theatre—why not channel emergency funding into our present theatres from public well being coffers?
What subsequent, you say? Authorities funding for bowling alleys? Possibly! In all seriousness, a Senate panel in July 2023 authorised a two p.c enhance within the Nationwide Institutes of Well being’s price range to $47.8 billion, whereas the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts’s proposed price range enhance this yr was from $207 million to $210 million. For comparability’s sake, France spent 4 billion euros on arts funding final yr. If, because the Surgeon Common warned, loneliness is as worrisome a illness as tobacco use, not solely ought to the NEA’s modest enhance be speedily adopted, however the NIH also needs to get into the enterprise of supporting theatre as one confirmed medication used to spur human connection.
A lot as I like streaming my favourite reveals on Hulu, tv doesn’t remedy the issue of human loneliness. Moderately, it exacerbates our isolation. Throughout the pandemic, streaming may need saved us from the issue of boredom verging on madness, but it surely additionally created the troubling sample of devouring tales in close to complete isolation, all of sudden altering historical cultural habits of sharing tales in neighborhood. The visible and literary arts are important to our inventive well being, however no artwork kind galvanizes neighborhood fairly the way in which the performing arts do. We are able to curl up and browse a guide in mattress, even often be part of guide golf equipment, however how can a guide membership evaluate with synchronized heartbeats? Some years in the past, a examine by neuroscientists from College School London confirmed that viewers members’ hearts really begin to beat in unison once they watch a play in actual time collectively. A room of individuals feeling the identical factor on the similar time is sort of a medical miracle, a religious elixir, a balm.
There is no such thing as a prescription medication for loneliness. It’s as a substitute a neighborhood, cultural, and structural drawback, which the theatre addresses in its very DNA, with out apparently which means to.
After we make a play collectively, we fairly naturally create camaraderie, an historical type of social glue. After we exit for an evening on the theatre, we go away our homes, grow to be presentable clothes, usually go along with a buddy or two. As an viewers, we see different human beings milling round, and as soon as the present begins, we hear tales that talk to our collective souls—not in contrast to the method of going to a home of worship. These performs might be repeated over and over by totally different communities shaped round storytelling, but someway breathe newly with each incarnation.
From an at-risk baby who gathers with others to make a play after faculty, to a teen looking for pals who joins the highschool musical, to an aged widow who goes to a matinee with a buddy, to a 30-year-old who may go to the theatre on a date—the theatre addresses the issue of human loneliness a each stage of growth. There is no such thing as a prescription medication for loneliness. It’s as a substitute a neighborhood, cultural, and structural drawback, which the theatre addresses in its very DNA, with out apparently which means to.
A former scholar of mine, the sensible playwright Phillip Howze, created a collection of Self-Portraits which culminate in sudden proximity and dialog amongst viewers members. In A 24-Decade Historical past of Standard Music, the luminary Taylor Mac had viewers members cross ping pong balls from one mouth to a different. These groundbreaking experiments in creating immediate neighborhood in actual time are essential and profound. These are pure corollaries, or additional iterations, of the bizarrely efficient, historical sitting-in-silence-and-crying-or-laughing-at-the-same-time theatre approach. Final yr, I went alone to see the play Main Belief by Eboni Sales space (printed in this month’s subject). Although I didn’t know the individuals sitting on my left or my proper, our aching compassion for the loneliness of the principle character, and the tenderness of our in-the-moment opening to inventive expertise, made us really feel like a newly shaped neighborhood by the top of the night.
I as soon as needed to begin a theatre firm known as Extra Than One Cup, based on the precept that everybody ought to have a couple of cup of their house to share drinks with guests. A buddy of mine had gone on a blind date and the person she met solely had one cup for consuming. I stated, “You’ll must discover a man with a couple of cup!” All of us want a couple of cup! A theatre expertise is shared. It’s a symbolic clinking of glasses, a cup that runneth over in a time of adversity, extremity, and wish.
Theatre might even perform as a spot to seek out love, creating evenings dedicated to blind dates throughout previews. I might think about an initiative known as “Plus One” through which single-ticket patrons had been paired with different single-ticket patrons; they could possibly be given free drinks at intermission to lubricate a dialog between them.
There’s nothing worse than writers quoting themselves, however maybe you’ll forgive me if I quote one in all my characters, who as soon as stated, “Possibly performs are corny. However the fact is nobody is lonely whereas they’re in a play.”
Sarah Ruhl (she/her) is a playwright, essayist and poet residing in Brooklyn.
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