Through press conferences, conventions, rallies, and speeches, political leaders use narrative, character, emotion, music, visual design, and symbolism to shape public feelings.
So does theatre.
Political performances and theatrical plays can also share examinations of justice, power, war, identity, responsibility, and communal life.
Both can be entertaining.
Both can be unnerving.
Only one type of staged performance has endured since humans gathered to celebrate harvests, mourn losses, and make meaning together. Only one is likely to endure whatever it is we’re currently doing to ourselves.
Theatre Asks Questions
The imaginative and storytelling impulse at the root of theatre (a Greek word) existed in scattered, informal forms across many cultures long before “the birth of an actor” in sixth century BCE. That was when Thespis stepped out of an Athenian chorus to take an individual speaking role.
The dude stole the spotlight, if you will. In doing so, he helped establish another Greek idea: dialogue, understood then as a philosophical conversation aimed at discovering truth.
At the beginning of the fifth century BCE, theatre was a civic obligation in the same category, for example, as funding a warship. Theatre was a national ceremony built into the democratic calendar and the entirety of Athens shut down for it.
Prior to that, theatrical performances were more Dionysian. Ecstatic. Choral singing. Laments. Mimicry in hunting or fertility rites.
In other words, more like political conventions.
Political Performance Seeks Answers
A Greek tragedy like Antigone or The Persians did not tell an audience which candidate to support. They made audiences experience conflicts that political communities cannot easily resolve. They asked questions like: Who has legitimate authority? What does victory cost? Can law be both just and cruel? What does a city owe its dead, its enemies, and its future?
A political convention or rally, on the other hand, usually has a more instrumental objective: transform emotion into political action. Success is measured through enthusiasm, unity, media attention, fundraising, persuasion, turnout, or electoral victory.
The difference is that Athenian theater delivered debatable and conflicting outcomes, which tapped into civil discourse.
Modern conventions and rallies generally try to make society appear unified and electorally useful.
Theatre invites thought. Politics often prefers alignment.
Theatre Leaves Us Thinking
In an “immersive” theatrical production, the action and elements of the play can take place all around the audience. I once attended an immersive production about a young drug dealer and the consequences his choices had for his family.
The play was staged in a house in a dodgy neighborhood that had previously been a crack house. Action took place simultaneously in multiple rooms of the house. Audience members could freely move from room to room, smelling what mama was cooking on the stove while watching someone try to break through the front door.
Audiences walked away from that play without banners, buttons, or bullshit.
In 72 years, I have been enthralled and entertained by Broadway, regional theater, community productions, street theater, school plays, opera, children’s theater, and improvisation performed with almost no props at all.
Not once have I walked away thinking, “This is what I was told to believe. This is how I was told to behave. This is what I will receive if I do what the lead actor told me I should do.”
But I have always walked away thinking.
Thinking means testing what you believe against the facts, questioning what you take for granted, and staying curious about how it looks from someone else’s side.
Political theater has little use for that.
I’d rather think.
A version of this post was also published on Substack, Sep 10, 2026
Banner image: aerogondo / Adobe Stock
