Abstract: It is hard to say if and how the experience of theatre might change lives or serve a community. Has theatre ever done so? Thinking of the effects of contemporary possibilities of ritual performance—a lifetime attending Catholic mass, yearly pilgrimages to Burning Man festivals or Disney World, an annual subscription to a regional theatre season, yearly participation in Mardi Gras, habitual involvement in political demonstrations, attending Red Sox games every season, following the Grateful Dead for years, or regular exposure to wayang kulit shadow-puppet shows in a Javanese village—one imagines that it's not so much that change takes place but that existing values are reinforced and community and personal identity are confirmed in live, shared experience. The live, in-time realization during a Donald Trump rally that one is not alone in feeling rebuffed and abused and that enemies can be identified, named, and vilified in a collective catharsis might change a life in the sense that both buried fears and suspicions and hopes for a “better” future might just be realized (in this case through the embrace of an authoritarian, if not fascist, spirit). This kind of transformation is not so much a doorway to change—a new direction—as it is a confirmation of convictions already deeply held.
John P. Bell (2016) studied this question.