In a keynote speech addressed to the Association of Theatre in Higher Education in 1992, performance studies scholar Richard Schechner (in)famously declared: “Theatre as we have known and practiced it – the staging of written dramas – will be the string quartet of the 21st century”. We are now more than two decades removed from this provocation. What, if anything, has changed about the state of theatre in the twenty-first century? Is theatre dead, as Schechner predicted, or is it still very much alive and breathing? In the spirit of retiring “Late Show” host David Letterman’s famous “Top Ten” lists, I submit the following reasons why theatre is still important today:
#10 Human Beings
