The most common form of theater across time and space has been solo performance. Think of a storyteller going into a public space, often accompanying themselves with music or speaking in poetry. These performers go by different names: bard, rhapsode, skald. In some ways, a rap artist is a direct inheritor of that tradition.

But Jeff Kaplan says, “When we think of a play in a theater with the lights off and a curtain and we applaud at the end, that form really begins in the 19th century.”

That might sound strange, but it’s true. Kaplan points to the year 1876 as an important turning point in performing arts education. In that year, the German composer Richard Wagner built an opera house in Bayreuth, Germany. In that opera house, the audience all sat facing the stage.

That was different from anything previously known. Before, the lights would be on, and the upper class would sit on the sides facing each other. They wanted to see what each other looked like. The middle class would sit in the middle, and the lower class would sit up in the high areas and throw things and yell and scream.

It was very raucous. It was very much a social event. Kaplan elaborates, “This modern notion in which we’re all sitting very quietly, and we’ve all purchased a ticket so we can consume the content, you know, that’s actually pretty recent.”

As you move through a European idea of theater, you’ll come to Shakespeare the verse plays. Next in online performing arts education, you’ll move on through the 19th century and the creation of naturalism and realism. Of those styles, Elizabeth Bradley explains, “We’re meant to actually suspend disbelief and feel that lives we can relate to are being reflected on stages.”

Realism and naturalism are terms that are often put together, conflated or used interchangeably. Bradley uses a recent important revival of “Our Town” — considered by many an iconic American play — as an example.

Of that particular production, she says, “Using all of our senses as an audience was important. So actual bacon was frying on stage in an actual frying pan in real time. And that’s an example of a kind of heightened realism.”

We still have the (David) Belasco Theatre on Broadway. In the very early years of the 20th century, David Belasco was a producer who believed that every detail added to a certain sense of verisimilitude, the sense that it is real, that it is truthful. Bradley shares, “So every afternoon, he would bring in real shanks of meat to hang on the stage, and they would ripen, so to speak, under the lights during the productions.”

Kaplan says, “Another date I’d point to is 1879, [when] a playwright named Henrik Ibsen wrote a play about a woman named Nora who is in an unhappy marriage.” As viewers watch the play, they discover that Nora has a secret. They also learn that there’s not really a bad guy; there’s not really a villain.

He continues, “And in the end, she walks out — spoiler alert, I’m sorry — but she walks out [on] her family on Christmas at night in Norway without a coat, and she slams the door. And it was the door; it was the door slam heard around the world. Women just didn’t do that.”

With that, theater had spoken truth to power forever. Shakespeare’s Hamlet says that theater is a mirror held up to nature. That’s the beginning of theater’s relationship with modern identity politics. Ever since, plays have really gone where things are sticky.

Take Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” for example. It’s about the American dream. “After World War II, who can dream?” Kaplan asks. “Does that include an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago who wants to buy a house in the suburbs? Are they allowed to dream?”

And so, ever since then, performing arts has addressed key issues that confront us to this day and, in fact, right now.

In the process of writing a play, Robert Galinsky states, “I’ve discovered there’s not one right way to do it.” There are many different ways to produce a successful stage story in the performing arts. One of the plays I was writing utilized the advice of Robert McKee, an incredible story structure artist. His main tip is this: Writing is rewriting, is rewriting, is rewriting. The willingness to review and revise your playscript is the key to optimizing your story. Reading McKee’s books and articles is the first step to a performing arts education.

Focusing on the story is one of the most effective ways to write plays. Galinsky recommends that writers should “write the story. Rewrite the story. Rewrite the story again and rewrite it some more. Don’t be afraid to honestly appraise the story, and be willing to eliminate weak plot points or write better ones.”

Every time your characters want to speak, don’t let them. If a brilliant line comes to mind, jot it down. But don’t start writing with dialogue. Start writing with the story and develop a plot.

When your story is really cooked, and you love it, now, open the door and let the characters start talking. They’re dying to speak. They will know what to say because the story is so strong.

That’s one way to do it. But another way to write your play is if you know the characters so well that you can let them go ahead and speak. Galinsky says, “I put them in a room on a piece of paper, and I get them to start talking. I will create an outline while they’re talking, and they help me discover where we are going with this conversation.”

Don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way to write a play. There are many different ways that depend on where you’re at in your life and what you’re interested in and excited about. Robert Galinsky loves writing the story, story, story until they’re ready to speak. But, he also knows “the five characters inside and out, so I’m going to let them start talking and keep talking.”

All of a sudden some gems of lines can come up, and they’re driving the plot. That’s exciting, too, because when you’re an audience watching a story-driven performance in the theater, it’s different than film. Because the performance is story-driven in the theater, it’s great when the characters take a twist or turn that you don’t expect. And many times, that is only going to happen because of the characters’ response with dialogue, not necessarily their thinking about where the story should go. Watching a play can be an online performing arts education if you are aware of these drama elements.

It’s important for me to look at theater as a field. Yes, a part of that is the industry, which can be very exciting. There’s so much more to explore. Theater doesn’t simply involve a kind of making of a show for a particular audience in a particular theater. It can mean many things. This is an essential element to teach in any performing arts education, even in online performing arts education.

“It happens in small communities, in large communities. It happens with professionally trained individuals, also within community members. It happens in spaces that are, again, about the texts, others that are physical. It takes on all these forms. In many ways, the exploration of theater is an ongoing thing that will keep changing, growing, and developing,” says Ruben Polendo.

You must see theater as a field, for those in theater or who have an interest in theater. The exciting thing is that you have an agency to navigate that field as a theater artist. Regardless, we all navigate the field differently.

“Theater has this odd reputation, which I want to dispel. I want to just push that away. That reputation is one in which people imagine being for this rarefied few. That you go there and everyone’s wearing a tuxedo. They’re watching whatever is playing with opera glasses. It’s just the most alienating, foreign not-for-us scene out there,” states Harvey Young.

That’s not the case at all. Theater, from its roots, has been about people coming together to watch performances. It began as street festivals, street fairs. Think of your favorites as an outdoor concert where people gather, and the community is there. People are expressing their delight, their pleasure. That’s the kind of energy that theater strives to capture. To put into a building and invite people.

That’s the core, base, the root. If you think about what theater gives you, the theater provides that chance to be a fly on the wall. It gives you a chance to spy, to listen, to encounter the stories, the experience, the lives of people who are not your own. It’s a bit voyeuristic. That’s part of the pleasure of it too.

It’s like you are getting access to stories and experiences you haven’t seen before. In some cases, if it’s musical theater, you’re watching not only those “fly-on-the-wall experiences.” You’re also encountering true virtuosity. You’re watching Lin-Manuel Miranda freestyle in certain moments. For example, In Love Supreme.

Theater creates proximity. You’re in the same room as the actors. You’re breathing the same air, and you’re in the seeing moment. It’s not like TV. It’s not like the movie theater; you are there. Your interaction, physicality, and coughing can change the spirit, dynamic, and mood of what’s taking place. That’s why people love theater so much. It feels different when you are there.