NY Times Book Review: "What to Watch"

Some interesting philosophical quotes that relate to the conversation of the "histrionic instinct" (see previous posts; here and here).


With scholarly assurance and meticulous care, he builds the case that "theatre is the art by which human beings make human actions worth watching." (Incidentally, this is precisely what that word "theatre" means: a place to behold.) From the time we are small, according to Woodruff, we have an innate need to be watched, to know that we are witnessed; equally, we have a need to watch, to drink in the actions and presence of those around us. When these two conditions are met, we grow.


His other main approach is to remind us that "we are all in this together." With rare exceptions, human experience is lived in community. Theatre, by definition (and Woodruff's own definition is careful to exclude solitary forms of watching), is a communal enterprise, both for those who mount a performance and for those who take it in. When it is done well, when it accomplishes its purpose of making human action truly worth watching, we come to care about the characters. This is a good and worthy practice, Woodruff tells us, because it "is not just a matter of theatre; we are better members of the human community if we know how to see other people as carable-about."

From What to Watch," New York Times Book Review, by Leah Hager Cohen.

Review of The Necessity of Theatre: The Art of Waching and Being Watched, by Paul Woodruff.

NY Times Book Review: "Subdivided We Fall"

Here are some interesting philosophical quotes that describe our modern era. Can you relate?

"We have built a country," Bishop writes, "where everyone can choose neighbors(and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens have become so ideologically inbred that we don't know, can't understand, and can barely conceive of 'those people' who live just a few miles away."

Bishop argues that this clustering of like with like accelerated in the tumult of the 1960s when, unmoored from the organizations and traditions that had guided their choices about how to live, Americans grew anxious and disorientated--and reflexively sought comfort in the familiar, cocooning themselves in communities of people like themselves . . .

Does this balkanization matter? Bishop argues convincingly that it does . . .

"Mix company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes."

From "Subdivided We Fall" New York Times Book Review by Scott Stossel

Review of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing