Theatre Should Make Us Uncomfortable
Written by Jordan Matt-Zeitler
Sometimes, theatre should simply be fun.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending an evening laughing at a ridiculous comedy, enjoying a familiar musical, or escaping from the real world for a couple of hours. We need those experiences. Life is difficult enough, and sometimes the most valuable thing theatre can give us is joy. But theatre can—and should—do more than entertain us.
It should ask questions. It should introduce us to lives we have never lived. It should shine a light on subjects we would rather ignore, challenge the things we think we know, and occasionally make us uncomfortable. Not because discomfort is the goal, but because growth rarely begins when everything feels familiar.
Beyond the Familiar
Theatre companies often return to the same plays and musicals because audiences recognize them. Familiar titles are easier to advertise, easier to sell, and usually feel like safer financial choices. That is understandable. Producing theatre is expensive, and every company has to consider whether an audience will buy tickets.
But when we continually produce the same handful of shows, we begin limiting what theatre can be. We hear the same stories, meet the same kinds of characters, and reinforce the same ideas about whose experiences deserve to be placed onstage.
A healthy theatrical community needs the classics, the crowd-pleasers, and the family favorites. It also needs new plays, rarely produced works, complicated stories, and perspectives that may not arrive with an instantly recognizable title. If we only choose what is familiar, we never discover what could become important.
Discomfort Is Not the Same as Harm
When we talk about uncomfortable theatre, we are not talking about creating an unsafe environment for artists or audiences. Artists should be treated with dignity. Rehearsal rooms should be collaborative and respectful. Audiences should receive clear information about potentially difficult subject matter so they can make informed decisions about what they are prepared to experience.
Meaningful discomfort does not come from exploiting trauma, humiliating performers, or shocking an audience simply to attract attention. It comes from recognition. It is the moment when we see a character make a choice we want to condemn—and then realize we understand why they made it. It is hearing an argument that challenges a belief we have never examined. It is witnessing an experience that forces us to acknowledge how differently another person moves through the world. That kind of discomfort can stay with us long after the curtain falls.
Theatre Creates a Place for Questions
Theatre does not always have to provide an answer. In fact, some of the most powerful plays leave us with more questions than we had when we entered. They ask us to sit with uncertainty, consider several points of view, and accept that complicated problems rarely have simple solutions. A play can explore faith without telling us what to believe. It can examine injustice without pretending it can solve it in two hours. It can portray flawed people without asking us to approve of everything they do.
Theatre gives us a place to wrestle with difficult ideas through the lives of characters. For a brief time, we are invited into someone else’s circumstances. We hear what they hear, discover what they know, and experience the consequences of their choices. We may leave with our beliefs strengthened. We may leave questioning them. We may simply leave with a better understanding of why someone else sees the world differently. Any of those outcomes can be valuable.
Awareness Begins with Encounter
It is easy to form opinions about people we have never met or experiences we have never had. Theatre makes those experiences personal. Statistics can tell us how many people are affected by addiction, discrimination, poverty, violence, mental illness, or political decisions. A play can show us one person living through it.
That does not make theatre a substitute for research, education, or direct community engagement. But it can open a door. It can make an issue feel human instead of abstract. It can give audiences a reason to learn more, begin a conversation, or reconsider an assumption. Stories build connections. Once we have looked into a character’s eyes and understood what they stand to lose, it becomes harder to reduce their experience to a talking point.
We Don’t Have to Agree
One of the most dangerous expectations we can place on theatre is that every story must affirm what we already believe. Seeing a play is not the same as signing a manifesto. Presenting a character’s point of view does not mean the playwright, director, actors, or theatre company endorses every word that character says. Drama depends on conflict. Characters need to disagree. They need to be wrong, stubborn, frightened, selfish, misinformed, or morally complicated. If every character speaks only in carefully approved statements, we do not have a play. We have a brochure.
Audiences are intelligent enough to wrestle with difficult material. They can reject a character’s argument while still learning something from hearing it. They can feel compassion for someone without excusing that person’s behavior. We do not have to agree with a story for that story to be worth telling.
Conversation Is Part of the Experience
Theatre is one of the few art forms that brings strangers into the same room to experience a story together in real time. That shared experience matters. An uncomfortable play can create conversations that would never have happened otherwise. Audience members may discuss what angered them, what surprised them, or which character they understood most. Friends may leave the theatre with completely different interpretations of what they just saw. Those conversations are not evidence that the play failed. They may be evidence that it worked.
The goal should not always be for everyone to leave smiling and in agreement. Sometimes the goal is for people to leave thinking.
Making Room for Every Kind of Story
At Harbor Theatrics, we believe there should be room for laughter, escape, reflection, heartbreak, and challenge. There should be room for the beloved musical audiences know by heart and the new play nobody has seen before. There should be room for stories that comfort us and stories that refuse to let us remain comfortable.
Balance matters. No one wants every trip to the theatre to feel like an assignment. Joy has value. Laughter can be healing, resistance can be funny, and a “fluff piece” can bring people together in ways that are every bit as meaningful as a serious drama. But if we never take a risk, ask a difficult question, or make space for an unfamiliar voice, we are not using theatre to its fullest potential.
Theatre should entertain us. It should also awaken our curiosity, expand our awareness, and challenge us to look beyond the boundaries of our own experience. Sometimes we should leave the theatre laughing. Sometimes we should leave with tears in our eyes. And sometimes we should walk into the night still turning a question over in our minds, unsure of exactly what we believe now. That is not something theatre needs to apologize for. That is part of what theatre is for.
