Losing Yourself Goes Against Culture – But It Is What Really Brings Joy | Diane Paulus| Big Think

I think play is important because you lose your ego. And we live ruled by our egos and our super egos and rules and I should, I shouldn't, I should, I shouldn't all day long. And when you play, that goes away because you have a focus that is not on yourself. And I think in life we crave those moments when we lose our self.

For a country that is as obsessed with his selfhood and celebrity and personhood and identity, I think the great irony is that the happiest moments of our lives are when we lose ourselves. And people lose themselves in so many ways. They lose themselves when they take a jog, and all of a sudden, you're in that zone. You lose yourself in love. You lose yourself when you have sex. You lose yourself when you're just engaged in nature. These are the moments that we crave, and I think I have always been interested in that moment.

For me, it's come when I've been part of a group. And I think it's because I did theater as a kid, and I always found that moment when you could be with a group of people, and it didn't matter; you didn't matter anymore. And of course, you matter because you're bringing all of your heart and your soul and your mind to it, but you're involved in something larger than yourself.

And what's beautiful about the theater is you always get to begin again. And I think as a director, I love that that you always get to start again, and you're not starting again like this back to the same place; you're beginning again and again and again. So everything you do, you're building on, and everything that you experience in life, you can pour into your next endeavor.

So I feel very lucky that I'm in a profession where whatever I'm thinking, learning, feeling, stretching my brain, experiencing, family life, health, problems, politics, all of that is fodder for how you can be a better artist. So that all comes into play when you're in a room with other people and you can create something out of nothing.

It's that making the invisible visible, which is a very precious thing that we do naturally as kids. And we see it all the time. And that's what I said earlier about audience. An audience actually, they want to play too. They want to be engaged. Being engaged is, in a way, playing; it is being allowed a space where you can lose yourself, and you can participate.

And it doesn't mean interactive theatre. I can be sitting in a chair and watching a great scene between directors, and I'm participating, and I'm losing myself, and I'm engaging, and I'm playing; I'm helping to toss that ball back and forth, that invisible ball. I mean, I feel the more in the theater that an audience feels like if those actors toss the ball to me, I could toss it back, or if I toss that ball onstage, they'd toss it back—that there's that connection.

The more engaged we are. So I'm always looking for those moments where I think it's why I like musicals because we don't sing in life; we just don't. So it's a theatrical point of view. And there's a collusion with everyone in the room that this is not real, but we're all going to suspend our disbelief and imagine and play...