Patsy Rodenburg: Why I do theater | Video on TED.com

Patsy Rodenburg: Why I do theater Video on TED.com

Nero by Vladimir Kush

As a young college student in theatre, I performed the role she talks about from Trojan Woman. (Andromache is a young mother whose husband has been killed in battle and during the play, her young son is thrown from the top of the battlements.) I can still remember the level of visceral grief that performance called up in me, even though I was not yet a mother. I have not acted since college, but seeing this video reminded me of my experience of the truth about the ART of Acting--not to be confused with the BUSINESS of acting (the teeth and tits work she speaks of). Like other forms of art, as mentioned in the previous post, Ms. Rodenburg reminds us that it is about truth telling. And telling the truth requires a lot of a person--you have to be willing to feel and bear that emotional truth yourself, then you have to tell it whether your audience wants to hear it or not. Often, in the moment, they don't--like the man in the story--because it is painful. But later, it is a blessing to have heard it, to have some reminder that this, too, is a shared human experience.

As Ms. Rodenburg mentions, theatre originated with the Greeks as a religious event. It was considered an event that could heal the psyche or soul. We still have theatre that heals, but it is harder to find. It seldom occurs in big, splashy, overpriced venues. It sometiems occurs in small, underfunded black box theatres with an unpaid cast. This is the beauty of live theatre.