By David Winitsky, Founder of the Jewish Plays Project
I’ve spent my entire adult life making theater. And theater doesn’t make any sense.
Here’s how it works: Group A, (let’s call them the audience) sits in a dark room and stares at Group B (let’s call them the actors), all of whom are working very hard to pretend to be people they are not. That’s weird, right?
But here’s the really crazy part: in the theater, Group A actively chooses to believe Group B. The audience, enlightened adult members of modern society, makes a conscious choice to believe that the actors are who they say they are.
The technical name for this bizarre phenomenon is “willing suspension of disbelief”, and it’s one of the most important things in the world.
When we suspend our disbelief, we take a break from our fact-laden world. We loosen our grip on the need to be right, to be correct, to be shown proof. When we suspend our disbelief, we make a leap that is – dare I say – religious. For what is faith but the active choice to believe things for which there is no objective proof?
When we gather in the theater and suspend our disbelief, we open ourselves to the possibility that there might be a world that we don’t know, a world that is different, and perhaps better, than the world we are in right now. And we do it together, as a group, as a people.
That’s crazy. And it’s beautiful.
It’s easy not to believe. It’s simpler to give in to the hard, hard world and disbelieve anyone who tries to change it. At PresenTense, we are so fortunate to find an entire community –Mentors, Coaches, Staff and supporters – that so willingly suspends that disbelief. Their faith in our ventures is inspiring and awesome and intensely Jewish in ways that make the daily trials of the entrepreneur’s life a joy to bear.
This process of making the Jewish world better is crazy. With PresenTense on our side, it’s beautiful, too.
I’ve spent my entire adult life making theater. And theater doesn’t make any sense.
Here’s how it works: Group A, (let’s call them the audience) sits in a dark room and stares at Group B (let’s call them the actors), all of whom are working very hard to pretend to be people they are not. That’s weird, right?
But here’s the really crazy part: in the theater, Group A actively chooses to believe Group B. The audience, enlightened adult members of modern society, makes a conscious choice to believe that the actors are who they say they are.
The technical name for this bizarre phenomenon is “willing suspension of disbelief”, and it’s one of the most important things in the world.
When we suspend our disbelief, we take a break from our fact-laden world. We loosen our grip on the need to be right, to be correct, to be shown proof. When we suspend our disbelief, we make a leap that is – dare I say – religious. For what is faith but the active choice to believe things for which there is no objective proof?
When we gather in the theater and suspend our disbelief, we open ourselves to the possibility that there might be a world that we don’t know, a world that is different, and perhaps better, than the world we are in right now. And we do it together, as a group, as a people.
That’s crazy. And it’s beautiful.
It’s easy not to believe. It’s simpler to give in to the hard, hard world and disbelieve anyone who tries to change it. At PresenTense, we are so fortunate to find an entire community –Mentors, Coaches, Staff and supporters – that so willingly suspends that disbelief. Their faith in our ventures is inspiring and awesome and intensely Jewish in ways that make the daily trials of the entrepreneur’s life a joy to bear.
This process of making the Jewish world better is crazy. With PresenTense on our side, it’s beautiful, too.
RSS Feed