This week I have been thinking a lot about theater. One of the things I was most excited about when I moved to San Francisco was the availability of affordable live theater, and one of the surprises of actually living here is the reality of not getting out and see as many plays as I would like.

I can count the number of plays I saw last year on two hands: Evie’s Waltz at Magic Theatre, The America Play by Thick Description, Skin at Climate Theater, Culture Clash and Friends and Over the Mountain at Brava, You’re Gonna Cry at Red Poppy Art House. Overall, they were some of the most social, entertaining and educational evenings I’ve had at local arts events. And within this list there are major omissions, things I wanted to see but couldn’t, theaters I’ve been meaning to get to, even tickets purchased and not used because when faced with the possibility of a free evening, a good night’s sleep won out (according to Ben Cameron, that last one makes me a Yankelovich poll statistic).

I’ve been thinking about what it would take to ensure that theater gets more time and space between work, family, friends, visual art, readings, live music, et cetera. I’ve been thinking about who participates in Bay Area theater, after a brief but provocative talk with a colleague whose local theatergoing experience—particularly, observations about who is in the audience—has been very different from mine.

And, I’ve been wondering … do so-called “community nights” encourage misconceptions about who likes theater and decrease dialogue by surrounding us with a sea of ourselves? How much does this take away from the overall theatergoing experience? Is this balanced by an increase in attendance and other benefits?

I think a bad night at the theater can often be redeemed by the civic aspect—the opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions with other audience members. A good night of theater can become life-changing. How do community nights shift the civic aspect?

Another reason this is all stirred up in my head is that last night I was reminded, via Twitter, of a theatergoing experience that changed my life.

So the story is, I was just out of college and had moved to the Twin Cities to pursue my dream of being an actor at the Guthrie. I auditioned for a play at Pillsbury House, a professional theater that is part of a larger nonprofit network of community centers—they didn’t give me the part, but they gave me a free ticket to see a play called Dutchman, written in 1963 by beat poet and black activist LeRoi Jones. Pillsbury House was in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The play was disturbing. The post-show talk was uncomfortable.

Upon experiencing the same production, journalist Anne Ursu  wrote the following in a CityPages article:

“[cast & director]Goranson, Remington, and Blagen smile and look out at the audience with       welcoming expressions. There is silence. After a while, a white man speaks in general terms about the language of the play, accompanied by the sound of shifting in seats. Then, silence again. The troika onstage looks as if they want to be somewhere else. So does the audience. Finally Rohan Preston, theater critic for the Star Tribune, raises his voice. ‘I don’t know if I should be speaking, but I’m really struck by how uncomfortable everybody is, by how difficult it is for us to have this discussion.’ Everybody breathes in.”

“Everybody breathes in” … and then, at the performance I saw, they couldn’t stop talking.

For me, the civic aspect of that experience—different people in the same room together, sharing ideas about what they had just seen—opened the door to a place where people were making an effort to understand and appreciate each other better through art, and pursuit of that experience has defined my most significant personal and professional choices for ten years. The performance was electrifying. The quality of the discussion, once it got rolling, had everything to do with the fact that some harsh truths had been laid bare onstage before an audience with differing experience, knowledge and opinions.

Getting back to the question of seeing more theater now, that intersection of art and ideas is what I am looking for, and it is hard to find within the calendar listings, advertising and marketing for most theaters. It is easier to stay “close to home,” rely on the recommendations of friends and colleagues, attend arts events that aren’t as high-risk as theater, where once you walk through the door you are pretty much committing yourself to 2+ hours.

But when all’s said and done, I love theater. And it was a play, not an exhibition or a reading or a dance class, that changed my life. The tweet that got me thinking about this was from Howard Sherman, my former boss at the O’Neill Theater Center and now director of the American Theatre Wing. ATW is holding a Play That Changed My Life contest. Interesting to see how theater has changed the lives of others!