Good theatre is never wondering when it’s over. I had a few experiences as a child and young adult where I sat in an audience sincerely hoping that the show would never end. Bill Irwin’s Regard of Flight, Greater Tuna, a fabulous Irish storyteller whose name I don’t remember, Singin’ in the Rain on Broadway. I walked out of all of those performances elated, exhausted and yearning for more. I can’t say I’ve felt that way in a very long time, though perhaps now that theatre is my job and not merely my pastime, I am incapable of feeling such exuberance for it.

When I spend the evening at the theatre I want to be entertained, I want the experience to make me feel something, and I want it to make me think. That’s the ideal. Most days I’ll settle for two out of three. There are a few shows I’ve seen over the past years where I would have gone back just to see one moment again, like Jen Engstrom saying “How are you?” to Kate Buddeke in Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue at A Red Orchid; or Aaron Smoot kissing Janelle Snow (playing his mother) just to shut her up in Jenny Laird’s Only the Sound at Chicago Dramatists. There was something revelatory and shocking and desperately honest in those moments. And they make me feel like I got my money’s worth.

The trick of theatre is that we’re lying and trying to tell the truth at the same time. Let’s not take ourselves so seriously that we forget we’re playing, pretending. The set is meant to stand up to scrutiny for only a month or two, the moonlight is artificial, the actors put on foreign accents and odd clothes. They memorize lines that a playwright guesses are what some characters in this situation would say. And then we invite people in—often people we know—to participate in the game, to suspend their disbelief, to trust us. People pay money to see us pretend. Astounding. And yet we go through these rewrites, these hours of rehearsal to find something true in the midst of all this make-believe. I think it’s this truth—if and when we manage to find it—that makes theatre worthy and good.

Mia McCullough is a playwright. He latest play, Echos of Another Man, was produced at Stage Left last fall.

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