THIS IS AN OLD POST ABOUT THE 2016 TRUMP VS HILLARY DEBATES

I applaud the honesty and courage of the NYU professors who sought to prove their premise that Trump had won the debates with Hillary because he was a man and she was a woman, not because he was a better debater. 

In order to demonstrate their theory, the professors staged a replay of one of the presidential debates with a woman imitating Trump and repeating his debate responses. And they had a man play Hillary, repeating her responses. 

In this brilliant act of pure theater, they shockingly revealed to themselves their own biases. With a woman playing Trump, they could suddenly see how persuasive and charming Trump’s debating performance had been. The man who played Hillary revealed her performance to be unfocused and annoying by contrast.

Using live theater, they saw the irrefutable proof with their own eyes, open for the first time to their own prejudices. Previously, they had been convinced Hillary was the winner, and it was only the outdated prejudices of the audience in favor of men that had designated her as the loser. 

And conversely, they had reviled Trump as the loser and found themselves wrong again, when a woman repeating Trump's words easily convinced them she was the winner. Thus, because of their psychological bias against the male sex, they had been blind to the superiority of Trump’s performance. 

Everything they perceived about Trump had been the result of a mental bias about sex which made them unable to judge either him or Hillary fairly and without prejudice. Theater revealed their own minds to them. 

Since the days of Ancient Greece, down through the Middle Ages and Christian Morality Plays, to Shakespeare’s Elizabethan England, to great American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, and American musicals like A Chorus Line, nothing is more subversive than theater. Nothing has more raw power to influence a person’s perceptions. 

Live theater is one of the great intellectual experiments of Western civilization whose power is to open up the minds of the audience by enabling them to recognize and understand themselves and their world from a safe seat in the dark and share the experience with others like themselves. Don’t forget the Greeks invented theater…and democracy.

It seems to me that today, in modern Western civilization, we ignore and underrate the value of having a harmoniously balanced personality. Imagine what other wrong and harmful choices were made by the people who loved and defended Hillary Clinton merely because she was a woman. Mental biases are signs of unbalanced minds and lead to unintentionally self-destructive behaviors. 

Culture and mental health are very closely linked. A country cannot create a functioning and civil society of productive, happy people without a vibrant culture to guide that society. I strongly believe that culture must include live theater that is available and affordable for everyone. We must free theater from the shackles of prejudice and censorship, as well as punishing regulations and excessive costs, so that it can again become a vibrant part of our cultural landscape, healing minds while entertaining. What a great, three thousand year old idea! 

I confess to being as bad as anyone in undervaluing theater for many years. It was sheer luck that I grew up near New York City in the days when there was an exciting and affordable theater culture. Birthdays and Christmases always meant tickets to a Broadway show. I regarded it as a delicious luxury, which I adored, but that didn’t detract from its value to my mental health. 

As I grew older and tried to find my way in life, I began to realize that theater is so much more than just a good time. Easily and delightfully, it taught me about myself and my fellow man. Theater is the intellect of a society having a conversation with itself. What a joyous way to cure the many dislocations and confusions our minds may suffer from.

And, as the professors who watched the staged debate proved, Trump was the better candidate, regardless of his sex, which I believe also validates the wisdom of the democratic process. Those brave and honest professors have provided us all with a valuable piece of real theater. It’s time to reclaim theater from the stifling grip of corporate propaganda.