Theater

In a theater you sit with strangers in the dark and feel the same thing at the same moment. There's almost nowhere else like it.

Ancient theater was born in Athens in the 5th century BC — as a religious festival for the god Dionysus. Three tragedies plus a satyr play per day, all outdoors, every role played by men in masks. Out of worship came an art form.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 in the middle of a performance of “Henry VIII” — a stage cannon had set the thatched roof on fire. Within a year it stood again, until the Puritans forced it to close in 1642.

Sit in the first three rows if you can. Theater lives on faces, not on set design — and from row 30 you see the plays like a TV with subtitles.

Something happens in theater that no screen can replace: real presence.

“If you could meet one historical person — who?”