When it comes down to it, though, the thing that makes a live performance work for me is the sense of magic it contains. Performance always involves smoke and mirrors, to some extent, and that’s what makes it amazing and so powerful when it works. When you walk into the theater you know you’re going to be deceived. You’ve paid for the privilege of it. There’s nothing worse than a show where nothing is left to the imagination, where every detail is painstakingly rendered, where my role as an audience member is entirely passive—there are plenty of other mediums I could turn to for that.
-Alexis Clements, playwright