Why We Need Theatre
Lessons in Empathy, Community, and Showing Up Fully from a Life Spent on Stage
I think I first became intrigued by the theatre when I was in college. I remember taking classes like Shakespeare, the history of theatre, stagecraft. It was a slow discovery, more of a quiet pull than a sudden awakening. I’d go to shows, sometimes with friends, sometimes by myself, and I’d sit there in the dark, transfixed. The stories, the costumes, the lights, the actors, it all felt like magic, but not the unattainable kind. More like something sacred I didn’t yet understand.
During that time when I became friends with some of the theatre majors, I felt like I was among royalty. They seemed larger than life to me, even in sweatpants and backpacks. I was in awe of how these everyday people could step onto a stage and command a room. I never, not for one second, thought I could do what they did. Acting seemed like an extreme hurdle, something only other people dared attempt.
But still, I couldn’t stay away.
Throughout my twenties, no matter where I lived - Durango, Colorado. Upstate New York. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bar Harbor, Maine - I always found my way to a theatre. Sometimes it was community theatre, sometimes professional, sometimes a college production in a makeshift black box. I didn’t care. I just needed to be near it. I needed to witness it. And I’m talking plays, not musicals.
I remember quite clearly, it was 2001, I was 31 years old, and my then-husband and I had gone to see Lost in Yonkers in Maine. In the program, there was an ad offering acting classes from beginner to advanced. And in that instant, I knew I was going to sign up. It wasn’t dramatic. No lightning bolt. Just a knowing. It was time.
When I called to register, they told me the beginner class didn’t have enough interest and had been canceled. If I wanted to take the class, I’d have to join the intermediate group.
I was terrified.
And then, I went.
I remember standing just inside the door of that studio, coat still on, heart pounding. A circle of strangers stood in socked feet, stretching, yawning, laughing. Someone handed me a form and said, “Welcome.”
The actress who had just played Bella in Lost in Yonkers was in the room. She was taking the class too. I was starstruck. Intimidated. I felt like a complete imposter.
That night, I did what the teacher told me to do. I acted like a monkey crossing the room. I felt ridiculous. And also, I felt like myself, in a way I hadn’t before.
That class cracked something open.
I kept going back. Week after week. And soon, I wasn’t just taking classes, I was auditioning, and I got my first part as Poppy in Noises Off.
I didn’t know it then, but I was stumbling into something bigger than a hobby.
That was the beginning. Of a life I never saw coming, but can’t imagine living without.
Fast forward two decades and I’ve done theatre all over the world.
Maine, Wyoming, Shanghai, London, Indiana, Antarctica, Montana - cities, small towns, islands, and in-between places. I’ve moved a lot in my life. Sometimes for work, sometimes for love, sometimes just because it was time. And every time I landed somewhere new, I knew exactly what to do first.
I’d look up the local theatre.
Even before I found a dentist or a grocery store. Before I figured out where to get a haircut or which restaurant had the best breakfast. I was already on the community theatre website.
Because I knew what I’d find there.
I’d find my people. Theatre people. The kind who stay after rehearsal to help. The kind who ask how you’re really doing. The kind who will learn your lines with you in the parking lot, then hug you when you get it right.
I didn’t find divas or constant drama or egos fighting for the spotlight. I found family. I found a ragtag group of people who made room for each other’s flaws, who celebrated effort over perfection. I found support systems. Shared meals. Ride shares. Hugs in the wings before opening night. I found people who lifted one another up, onstage and off.
Theatre has taught me how to collaborate, how to trust my gut, how to listen with more than my ears. It has taught me to problem solve, to move outside my comfort zone, to express myself, to take up space, to step into characters I didn’t always understand, and to find pieces of myself inside them.
I think some people think theatre is about being famous, or getting paid. But ask any community actor who’s memorizing lines on their lunch break, or painting flats after work, or driving an hour to rehearsal after putting kids to bed, they’re not doing it for money.
They’re doing it for love.
And some of the shyest, quietest, most insecure people I’ve ever met are actors. The stereotype of being dramatic or loud or self-obsessed seems so off the mark. Acting is not showing off. It’s showing up. Fully.
📸Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin. Performed in 2004 at Off Square Theatre in Jackson, Wyoming
At certain junctures in my life, theatre wasn’t just something I did. It was my life.
My social life, my love life, my pastime, my passion, my compass. I went from one show straight into the next, barely taking a breath between closing night and the first read-through of the next script. I worked on memorizing lines in-between work shifts, when I got up in the morning, and anytime I could find a snippet of quiet to repeat those lines over and over and over again.
Socializing with fellow theatre people were my weekends. Rehearsals were my weeknights. The theatre was where I laughed the hardest, had long, late conversations, flirted, cried, fell in love, fell out of love, and kept coming back, because there was always another story to tell.
I wasn’t just "in a play"—I was in the life of theatre.
And here’s the part no one tells you about.
When a play ends, it hurts.
You rehearse for weeks, sometimes months, building something from scratch with a group of people who, at first, may be total strangers. You show up vulnerable. You flub lines. You cry in front of them. You sweat under stage lights. You help someone zip their costume, bandage a blister, or run lines backstage for the tenth time.
And then, curtain call. Strike. A group photo. A half-eaten cake at the closing party. And it’s over.
A note left in my bag from a fellow actor, scrawled on the back of a piece of paper, folded quietly found after we said goodbye:
“Dear Amy, my heart is heavy today because we are at the end of a wonderful experience. Every night you made me laugh, and lose my breath. Thanks for making this show so easy & fun & good.”
How often in regular life do you receive something like that?
That’s what theatre does. It fast-tracks intimacy. It creates a little temporary world where people show up, really show up, for one another.
And then that world disappears.
It’s part of the deal. Theatre is ephemeral by design. But that doesn’t make the endings any easier. In fact, the ache of those goodbyes might be the clearest proof of how real it all was.
📸 I wrote and directed a short play called Bacon. It debuted in 2006 with Riot Act, Inc. in Jackson, Wyoming
And then there’s the audience, and they often don’t know the power they hold.
We feel you. From the stage, we feel you. We need you to be there.
We feel your silence, your laughter, your held breath. We feel your restlessness, too. Your tears. Your stillness. Your heart breaking just a little when ours does. It’s an invisible current that runs between us - those of us telling the story, and those of you receiving it.
But you’re not just watching. You’re part of it.
When it’s good, when it really works, it’s because something is happening in that room that can’t happen anywhere else. It’s electric. It’s human. It’s a moment that will never repeat itself exactly the same way again.
That’s what makes theatre different.
It’s not a movie you can rewind or a book you can dog-ear and reread or a post or a reel you can return to. It’s not frozen in time. It’s fleeting. Fragile. Alive. And it only exists because we, you and I, are there together.
That shared breath, that hush before the lights come up, that collective ripple of laughter or grief, that’s not incidental. That’s the point.
It’s storytelling, yes. But not the passive kind we’re so used to these days. It’s active storytelling. Present storytelling. It asks something of you. And it gives something back.
📸The Exonerted by Jessica Bland and Erik Jensen. Performed in 2005 at Off Square Theatre in Jackson, Wyoming
How do people actually learn to see through someone else’s eyes, to feel what they might be feeling, to understand lives we’ve never lived?
It’s not something that is necessarily taught. And it’s not something you can be told. You can’t just hand someone a definition of empathy and expect it to bloom.
So how do we learn it?
I think… it’s stories.
Stories slip past our defenses. They open a door, softly, without demanding we walk through, but we do. Hopefully because we’re curious. And certainly because we’re human.
And theatre is where I have learned so much of this.
Over the years, theatre hasn’t just shaped the characters I’ve played. It’s shaped me.
It’s taught me how to stay curious, even when I don’t understand someone. It’s taught me how to listen, not just for lines, but for meaning, for subtext, for what’s not being said. It’s taught me to sit with discomfort, to explore the contradictions, to ask: What else might be true here?
Because when you’ve played people who are nothing like you, when you’ve inhabited their fears, spoken their truths, stood in their shoes under the scrutiny of an audience, you start to look at real people differently.
You start to understand that everyone is carrying something. That no one is the sum of their worst moments.
Theatre taught me to pay attention. To take a beat. It taught me that most people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and that even when they’re not, there’s usually a reason.
And more than anything, it has taught me the power of presence.
Onstage, you can’t phone it in, or do another take. You can’t zone out, rewind, or try again tomorrow. You show up right now, with what you’ve got, and you give everything.
Life can be like that, too.
📸I directed The Memory of Water. Performed in 2011 with East West Theatre in Shanghai, China
📸This is what I wrote in the program for The Memory of Water
The older I get, the more convinced I am that we need art, not as decoration, but as a vital force.
We need it the way we need connection, or laughter, or a deep breath at the end of a hard day.
Because art, in all its forms, reminds us we’re not alone. It reflects who we are, who we’ve been, and who we might become. It holds up a mirror and says, Look. This is you. This is us.
Theatre does that in real time. It’s living, breathing art. It brings strangers into a room and asks them to feel something together.
It’s one of the rare places where we gather, not to scroll or consume, but to witness. To participate in a story that only exists because we are there, sharing it.
That’s sacred.
And it’s not just entertainment. It’s how we practice empathy. How we remember complexity. How we hold both the heartbreak and the humor of being human.
Art gives us language for what we haven’t been able to say. It gives shape to what we feel in our guts but don’t know how to express. It opens doors to other perspectives, other lives, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, it helps us find our way back to ourselves.
Theatre, for me, has always been that kind of art. It’s given me family, purpose, joy, resilience, and the courage to speak. It’s taught me how to be with people. How to honor them. How to tell the truth, even when it’s hard.
And in a world that so often pulls us apart, art like this stitches us back together.
Story by story. Scene by scene.
One moment at a time.