Conclusion: Gaps, Absences, and Alternate Orderings

Abstract

The Canadian playwright, Judith Thompson, articulates a specific effect that she derives from the best theatre. She believes that theatre ought to intersect deeply with our understanding of the personal, a process that might entail the following:

[w]hen theatre works, it truly does hold up a funhouse mirror, but we know it is not actually a distortion, but a deeper, much more difficult truth. [...] The play not only controls what we see, but when we see it — incrementally, suddenly, in flashes, or a slow reveal; and we will not look away from a great play, for a great play entices us and excites us enough that we cannot look away or leave the theatre, and before we know it, we have done what we have spent our lives avoiding — we have confronted ourselves. (2010, p. 510)