The Teaching of Lessons

In terms of structure, overall content, and scene-by-scene storytelling, the piece is essentially about the teaching of lessons – to the audience as a whole, to individuals in the audience, and in some ways to humanity in general. In terms of the first, there is a clear sense about the piece, as there is in most theatre, that its essential existence is defined by a sense of community – that an audience is in the room with the characters as they play out their stories, intentions, and relationships. The audience as a whole is part of the lived experience – in this case, the enactment of, and engagement with, a series of stories each dramatizing characters learning a lesson, discovering a moral truth, or encountering a larger, universal meaning to individual human experiences.

There is also a sense, again as there tends to be with theater...