The Theatre Space is a Sacred Space

Photo by Alida Sullivan

“There are certain times when I sit in church . . .”  - Laramie Project

When I was a theatre student in college I had the good fortune of randomly picking an amazing powerhouse of a theatre program. Nothing anonymous here. It’s the University of Northern Iowa. Brilliant faculty, great program. I know that we are always wondering if we are completely preparing our students for the world outside. For me, I can’t say I was ready, but I was certainly as prepared as anyone can be.

Anyway, one of my professors there was Tisch Jones. I always loved going to Tisch’s lectures because they were filled with all kinds of new and wonderful things. She was my first directing professor. And I remember this phrase that she use to say.

“The theatre space is a sacred space.”

I listened. I believed that she believed it to be true. But I never really understood her. To be fair, there was a lot of things I didn’t understand, not just from Tisch but from Richard Glockner, the acting professor and especially Jay Edelnant, my mentor and an all around theatre bad ass. (You can quote me on that.) But what I found over time was that these things that I did not understand but wanted to, became clear as the years passed and I grew.

The things I did not understand did not leave me, they waited. And in the middle of a rehearsal or in a grad school seminar, or in a conversation with my students I will get this flash and then think, “So THAT’S what Richard was trying to get me to understand!” Ironically this most often happens as I am trying to get a student to understand something similar.

My mind kept going back to Tisch though. And I think, over time, I began to understand more. The thought has come back to me often as we work through The Laramie Project.

And even writing this down isn’t easy. Feelings that are difficult to translate into words.

But when you sit in the theatre and watch a show, particularly a show that draws the audience up close and into the firelight, you are opening up yourself to an experience. Trusting in the people on the stage to take you somewhere vulnerable and not to hurt you. Many people come into “Laramie” with a guard up. They know it is going to be sad, how could it not? I don’t blame them.

The play is written to earn that trust, and then take the audience through the events. To bring them to Laramie. And it does that very, very well.

That openness from the audience is paired with the actor who, if he has done his job, is also open to you. And so together you share an experience. Not just an audience member watching a story. A human being connecting with another human being and exchanging parts of our culture. Questions and theories, wrapped in emotion and humanity, in an effort to solve problems, to make the world better.

I will look you in the eyes and show you Catherine Connolly’s fear, but to do that I have to show you a little bit of my own authentic fear. In that moment, we grow. All of us.

And when you begin to look at theatre as a series of these moments happening show after show, performance after performance then it does, indeed, take on a sacredness. Like storytelling around the bonfire where our ancestors paired nourishment of body and nourishment of soul in one event and location. A ritual performance to improve our community. To improve ourselves. To connect us more strongly to one another.

And when I look at it that way, it really does seem quite clear.

Thank you Tisch.