THE BEAUTIFUL LIE

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The Architecture of Attention

The psychology of the audience has captivated me almost as much as the craft itself. Watching them pre-show linger in the lobby, exchange hellos, the turning pages of programs, and their respective stillness. Theater has never been just what happens under the lights. It’s a life circuit between performer and witness, an exchange of  heartbeat, breath and trust. For me, mapping the audience’s emotional and physical journey has always been at the heart of my craft.

The audience’s journey begins long before they enter the space. All week, the upcoming performance looms in their minds, and sits on their calendar like a looming obligation. Some patrons arrive out of a deep love for the art, some curiosity, others because they were invited, or a subscription demanded it. In the days leading up, they wonder: What should I wear? Who will I run into? Will the show be worth the hype? Are the seats any good? Where will I park? Should I eat beforehand or grab something after? These trivial anticipations accumulate, shaping their mood and expectations. They carve out time from their busy lives, rescheduling commitments, arranging childcare, eating dinner early, investing hours they will never get back. The audience arrives carrying the residue of their day, their week, and unspoken troubles. 

A director doesn’t merely shape a performance. A director sculpts the audience’s entire experience, psychologically, emotionally, and physically, from the instant a marketing image catches their eye, through the week of quiet buildup, to the moment they step back into the night, changed. Every choice is consequential: the usher’s welcome, the temperature of the lobby, the length of the bathroom line, the comfort level of the seats. These are not peripheral details. They are the architecture of attention, an invisible scaffolding on which the story will support or fall.

This truth crystallized for me when I was asked to direct a piece for Anne Bogart. We were gathered in the classroom, and the performance was to take place outdoors in a site-specific location. When I asked, nervously, “Do you all just follow me to the site-specific spot?” she cut me off: “I don’t know. You’re the director. The show has already begun.” 

Anne taught me that the performance doesn’t commence when the curtain rises. It begins the moment the audience first encounters our world, sometimes weeks earlier, when the date lands on their calendar. My responsibility wasn’t only to move actors through space; it was to orchestrate the room’s emotional temperature, to conduct the collective pulse. Anne didn’t merely teach me to direct bodies; she taught me to direct attention itself.

Bogart’s influence runs deeper still. She speaks often of an elastic “gap” or “field” between performers and spectators, a living space that is both responsive and alive. Actors do not project at the audience; they listen with them. The audience completes the event, a co-star who never shows up for rehearsal, co-creating meaning in real time. For Bogart, attention is a moral practice: what we choose to notice, what we ignore, how we willingly linger with discomfort. These theatrical choices echo the civic ones we make beyond the theater walls. That lesson became the bedrock of my practice, but the roots of that understanding reach even deeper, and align with earlier provocations. 

Years earlier, in my formative teens, I saw an opposing tension play out vividly in a preview of Peter Sellars’ The Persians at the Mark Taper Forum during the height of the Persian Gulf War. The production was merciless, thunderous sound, bold light, and unapologetic direction. Some patrons sat transfixed, and half of the house fled mid-scene. I turned to Peter Sellars, who sat unfazed, and then indicated to the sound designer to turn the volume up. Sellars understood that theater can, and sometimes must, push people to the edge. Sellars deliberately enlisted the audience as participants in the drama. The walkouts were not failures; they were part of the experience, mirroring the chaos and moral turmoil of war itself. 

I loved Sellars play and direction, but I grieved a little for the audience members who missed the ending. Those who left had still invested their evening, their anticipation, their trust. They arrived ready to engage and departed unsettled, their time thrown into turmoil. Had Sellars crafted an experience that held everyone in their seats, albeit mildly uncomfortably, the full arc of the text might have landed differently. For those who remained, when Xerxes finally entered the earlier assault would have softened into profound vulnerability. 

The audience is as a living, multifaceted organism: a constellation of nervous systems, fatigue, and digital overstimulation. They arrive skeptical, distracted, fragmented by a world that rarely asks them to sit still and feel deeply, having already given us the irreplaceable gift of their time and anticipation. Our task is to honor that reality while gently coaxing them toward communal wonder.

This is why I anchor my directing in three inseparable principles:

Differentiation

Audiences crave variation, shifts in rhythm, temperature, texture, and space. A held silence after frenzy, a sudden pool of light in darkness, an unexpected stillness amid motion. These pivots re-engage the nervous system and keep attention alive.

Textual Clarity

No matter how experimental the form, the audience must be able to track thought and feeling. Confusion is the enemy of connection. The actor’s transparency, making inner life legible, allows spectators to surrender without fear of being lost.

Aesthetic Awe

Spectacle isn’t about budget; it’s about precision and soul. A single perfectly timed image, a shaft of light on a face, a sound that resonates in the sternum, these moments bypass intellect and strike the spirit. They restore our capacity for wonder and remind us we are not alone.

Every element, from the first marketing postcard to the lobby lighting to the welcoming  smile of an usher, either strengthens or erodes the pact between stage and patron. When people offer us their scarce time the obligation is immense. If they lower their armor, we must meet that trust with fierce intention. Theater is far too vital to be confined to what happens onstage. We should not perform at the audience; we must perform with them. The audience brings their own tempo, their private weather. Meet them there, or lose them forever.

Intentional directing attends to the audience’s physiology as much as its psychology. When the room vibrates and strangers synchronize in a collective aliveness,. That is when you know the work is alive. The aim is never mere admiration. It is movement: a sensation in service of clarity and in service of awe.

And in this accelerating age of artificial intelligence, live theater stands as the front line of resistance. You cannot AI live theater. No algorithm can replicate the alchemy of human bodies in the same room. As screens flood our lives with flawless, endless, solitary content, the hunger for ritual, for unmediated human connection, for true communion will only grow. The next generation, raised on simulation, will crave the real. We will be at the forefront of entertainment precisely because we offer what cannot be digitized: presence, vulnerability, collective aliveness.

This is the deeper art of direction: not to present a play, but to co-create a living experience. To guide a diverse gathering of strangers, who have already invested anticipation, time, and trust, into momentary unity, then release them, quietly transformed, back into the world.

That is the architecture of attention. And it is why theater is indispensable.

© 2026 Josh Pohja. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.

Realism is dead, y'all. Once the most urgent form of theatrical expression, it no longer belongs on the stage. Its true home is the couch, the screen, the prestige dramas in crisp 4K resolution. Realism slipped away the moment the theater got safe and comfortable, when craft began mimicking television, and ambition gave way to imitation.

If I want realism, I’ll stream it. If I want naturalism, I’ll turn on reality TV. The screen captures the detailed nuances of breath, the clenched jaw, the subtle raised eyebrow in a way no stage ever could. That level of intimacy exists only between the lens and its viewer. Theater is built for something else: something grand, electric, mythic where the air vibrates differently.

In a culture drowning in realism, theater must be extraordinary. It must deliver the breathless, the impossible, the dangerous. It must claim its singular power: the alchemy between actor and audience, the electricity in the room, the possibility of transformation. Anything less is a betrayal of the art form.

Even Anton Chekhov, the patron saint of realism, understood this tension. When a director at the Moscow Art Theatre suggested adding frogs and dragonflies to heighten The Seagull’s realism, Chekhov fired back: “Realistic? The stage is art.”

This is not an attack on realism. Realism was once necessary and revolutionary. It shattered melodrama and introduced emotional depth that forever changed theater. But now, that battle is over. Today, we live surrounded by sophisticated, deeply human portrayals on every screen. The mirror no longer surprises us. The stage must evolve as well.

What’s killing theater today is not talent, but risk. Too many performances feel safe, tidy, and carefully inoffensive. Actors have become editors, trimming familiar moments instead of venturing into the unknown. But the lifeblood of theater is risk - the willingness to enter uncertainty, embrace discomfort, and shatter expectations. Without risk, we’re just watching an expensive rehearsal. 

I recently  saw a play where a woman spoke alone onstage for ninety minutes, recounting the arc of watching her father die of cancer. It was exquisitely acted, thoughtfully illuminated, and tastefully directed. But the realism - this meticulous attempt to replicate emotional truth - kept me at a distance. I never surrendered. I never felt safe. The story itself paralleled my own - I lost my mother to cancer - and instead of feeling invited into shared space, I felt exposed. I spent most of the play managing my emotional defenses rather than surrendering to them. The performance felt like it was designed to be likable - crafted to simulate grief without ever truly risking it. That’s the danger of realism: it tells the story at us rather than with us. It aims for truth, but often bypasses the messy alchemy of shared presence. That’s the trap of stage realism now: it triggers without transforming.  And transformation requires something stranger, riskier, and more alive than realism can often offer.

Truth on stage is not passive. It is being forged before its audience by the sheer sorcery of an actor’s will, skill, and energy. Actors are sorcerers who can freeze time with a single held breath, bend the entire room with the turn of a shoulder, make the air itself feel heavier, electric, expectant. They do not merely perform moments; they seize them until every glance, every tremor, every deliberate silence slips past your defenses and lands like a hand over your heart. This live encounter is the one thing no screen or artificial intelligence will ever steal from us. That is theater’s singular, irreplaceable gift. That is what realism, in its safe modern form, has forgotten how to deliver.

Realism was once the revolution. Now it's a lazy habit. The theater's job is not to imitate Netflix. It’s to ignite the room. Shed the corporate gloss. Drop the sanitized productions engineered to offend no one and excite no one. True theater is dangerous. It’s raw, wild, unafraid to fail spectacularly. It lives in risk and refuses to settle for pretty entertainment.The future belongs to performances that feel unrepeatable - where danger lives in every breath, and no two nights are the same. That’s the theater worth fighting for.

Realism on stage is dead. Long live the theater that refuses to die with it.

© 2026 Josh Pohja. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.

Acting is the only lie that can make you feel seen. Only in the theater can deception leave you more exposed, more shattered, and more whole than the truth ever could. It is a strange paradox of lying to reveal what is real.  A conscious construction of fiction to stir recognition, connection, and catharsis. The actor is not lying to obscure, but to uncover. This chapter examines that delicate tension - the way performance, though born of illusion, opens a path to radical truth. In the hands of an artist, a lie can become a gift. In the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon.

In 2001, Marlon Brando gathered a group of actors in a Los Angeles warehouse for a workshop he called Lying for a Living. Few people know it exists and the footage remains locked away in secret. Unlike typical classes focused on technique or star power, Brando aimed to strip everything away and confront the heart of the craft itself: Acting is a form of deception. Though his intention was to expose how the craft can be prostituted, I felt he was digging into the ugly to uncover the beautiful. It’s not deception for the sake of manipulation or betrayal. Acting is a deliberately shaped illusion, designed to reveal something deeper and more true.

That insight unsettled me. The phrase “lying for a living” felt hip and raw; almost degrading. How could something that carries the weight of betrayal also hold a quiet, profound beauty? 

Over time, I returned again and again to the same question: how do you find grace within telling a lie? One evening I called Jesse Perez and asked, “How do you say ‘beautiful lie’ in Spanish?” He replied, Una Mentira Hermosa. I don’t speak Spanish, but the phrasing and sound resonated deeply. It named something I’d been searching for - that lying for a living is not merely about deception, but about shaping something meaningful. Brando’s talent and ultimate disillusionment with it pushed the craft in conflicting directions. But calling acting a lie flattens its mystery. It reduces the actor to a trickster. In truth, it’s the opposite.

Theatre is not a con. It’s a pact with the audience. They know what they’re walking into. They bought the ticket. The audience enters the space with a willing agreement to suspend disbelief. We don’t fool them. We invite them. 

The audience is building each moment alongside us. As active participants, they enter into a shared agreement - a willing belief in the fiction we present. This collaboration transforms mere lines on a page into a vibrant, living event charged with meaning and emotion. It is through this mutual engagement that the performance transcends its parts and becomes something profoundly alive. The theatre becomes a space of collective dreaming, where illusion drops its mask and becomes something honest, vital, and charged. And with that illusion comes responsibility.

Actors wield a subtle but real power - the power to stir, to reveal, to unite. This power carries profound responsibility, as theorists from Brecht to Artaud have emphasized. Brecht’s alienation effect reminds us that the actor must resist simply manipulating emotion, instead encouraging critical reflection. Artaud’s theatre of cruelty calls for an almost visceral force that shakes audiences awake without resorting to cheap tricks. And, Stanislavski’s approach to realism demanded disciplined truthfulness in performance. Together, these approaches underscore that performance is not mere entertainment or deception, but a potent act of ethical engagement with the audience.

Theatre, at its best, does the opposite. It distorts to clarify. It bends reality not to confuse, but to illuminate something essential. And yet, even the stage can fall into cheap tricks: forced tears or sentimental manipulation. When that power is abused, the consequences are devastating. The media and political forces weaponize lies, spinning ‘alternative facts’ not to illuminate but to obscure. Anyone can jolt an audience. That’s not the art we serve. We want catharsis, not spectacle.

Profound performance asks more. It demands discipline, rigor, and empathy. It calls the actor to hold the tension - to craft a lie so beautiful, so precise, the audience is hit with the vibrant pulse of human truth. No soundtrack tells them how to feel. No trick pulls their strings. They are moved because the moment is earned. We don’t perform to deceive. We perform to reveal.

To speak what’s often left unsaid. To step inside another life. To collapse the space between strangers. When it works, theatre becomes a mirror and a bridge, showing us not just who we are, but who we might be.

And that takes more than talent. It takes craft, curiosity, responsibility. To lie for a living - beautifully - is to serve something greater than self. It’s an act of radical empathy, a gesture of trust, a cry across the dark that says: You are not alone.

This is the work: not illusion, but revelation.

© 2026 Josh Pohja. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.

I want you to consider art not as a noun, but as a verb. Art is a force measured by impact, not objecthood, and it’s time we reclaim it. To bridge the gap between modern and next generation audiences we need to engineer a new rubric to measure its impact. Art lives not in what we frame, but in what we risk. Until we stop treating art as an object and start treating it as an event, we will continue to mistake its price for its power.  This isn’t to say that all nouns are bad. The distinction isn’t absolute. A painting doesn’t vibrate in isolation. Its energy isn’t inherent; it’s summoned in the charged space between object and observer. You can hang a painting, but you can’t hang the feeling it leaves behind. That’s where art lives. Art as a noun is a commodity. Art in action is a verb. Art is a verb posing as a noun. Categorizing it as such minimizes its potential. 

Art happens during that transformative moment where the live experience surpasses anything you expected and rewrites your sense of what life can be. When the audience doesn't force you into a standing ovation, but when a standing ovation is summoned. While some may argue that art’s power lies in its permanence - as object, artifact, or tradition - the “art as verb” model does not reject these forms, but rather expands the lens through which we engage with them, inviting us to experience not just what art is, but what it does.

The problem arises when we treat art only as a thing and forget its power as an event. We surrender our perspective to a museum curator who decides what is art and what is not. We trade our enthusiasm for a stranger’s doubt after one bad review. Digital Platforms, artificial intelligence and algorithms can track clicks but do not dictate what is art. Ticket sales don’t make art - it only measures what was sold. Framing art as a noun gives others the authority to determine its meaning and value, and you surrender the right to define it yourself. As a noun, art becomes a fixed idea which others monitor and control. When we let others decide, art stops being a catalyst of revolution. It becomes a relic. We need to stop asking, ‘Is this art?’ and start asking, ‘What is this doing to us?’

Art is not a label; it is action. Only when someone looks at a painting in a museum, feels something, and participates in the exchange should we consider it art.  Experiencing and creating art is a shared act of vulnerability; it is personal and intimate; protected and exposed. We are both transformed during this dynamic exchange. This interaction buries itself into the somatosensory cortex of the brain, embedding itself not just as memory, but as sensation. It’s not something you simply recall - it’s something your body replays. The hairs on your arm remember it. Your pulse remembers it. The experience is archived in your nervous system, stored not as data, but as a living, physical imprint. This is why great art doesn’t fade into the past. It lingers. It hums in the bones, flickers behind the eyes, and resurfaces in unexpected moments.  When art transcends, it doesn’t just brush up against the edges of our lives—it pierces straight through. It doesn’t ask politely for your attention; it demands it. And after it’s gone, you are left different, altered, marked by the experience. It’s a scientific phenomenon known as intercorporeal resonance - a state where individual boundaries blur, and the breath, heartbeat, and nervous systems of a roomful of strangers begin to unconsciously sync. The audience becomes a single, living organism, not merely watching, but participating in a collective experience. It’s why your pulse quickens when the room holds its breath, why laughter multiplies, why one person’s tears trigger another’s. In that moment, emotion isn’t personal - it’s contagious.

Is this not the goal? A collective moment of intercorporeal resonance — is the real aim of the live theatrical event. Art is the action that makes this possible. It is the spark, the charge, the catalyst that collapses the distance between bodies and ideas, between instinct and intellect.

And yet, we continue to cling to outdated definitions, boxing art into fixed categories and inherited hierarchies. It’s time to reconsider our preconceived notions about what art is, where it lives, and what it’s capable of. We must make room for a radical paradigm shift, one that no longer measures art by permanence, objecthood, or pedigree, but by impact, resonance, and transformation. One that recognizes art’s fluidity, its agency, and its suppressed potential to disrupt, to heal, to incite, and to unify.

Because if intercorporeal resonance is the goal — and it is — then our task isn’t to curate artifacts, but to orchestrate experiences. To move beyond preserving art as a fossil, and begin treating it as a living force that shapes culture in real time. 

ART=TRUTH+BEAUTY

Art thrives on a balance of truth and beauty. It’s this equation: ART=TRUTH+BEAUTY that  stimulates the somatosensory cortex leading the audience toward intercorporeal resonance. As artists, our mandate is to activate this combination for our audiences. The audience’s time is worth more than their money. They could stay home and scroll social media. Yet, they showed up at your gallery, your recital hall, or your theatre for an event worth their time. You have been commissioned and empowered to deliver them an effective experience. 

Creating art using ART=TRUTH+BEAUTY is like trying to build a nuclear reactor with just E=MC². It takes a profound amount of curiosity, discipline, resilience, humor, joy, rehearsal and training to deliver this experience to an audience. Equally important is embracing the humility that comes with believing you can succeed. 

Our audience trusts us with songs and stories that touch the deep core of life's pain, its messiness, and hardest truths. They don’t come for that.  They come to be seen, or to escape. They come to be seduced by beauty. Whatever it took to get them in that seat we are responsible for their experience. Our charge is to provide  them with an experience that nurtures their human spirit. That’s the beauty of considering art as a verb. It’s not passive. If effective, it doesn’t just leave the audience thinking or entertained. It leaves them changed. By reframing art as a verb, this formula transcends the boundaries of the stage, the canvas, the page, to permeate the soul.

Ticket sales and critical reviews are real things, but also distractions, hollow markers of success in a world that too often forgets what art is for. The real rubric, the true measure, is impact. Did it move you? Did it challenge you? Did it make you laugh until your ribs ached, or cry until you could barely breathe? Did it crack open your heart, if only for a moment? Did it make you feel alive? If your audience said “yes” to any of those questions then ticket sales and critical success will follow. 

Audience transcendence isn’t some lofty, unreachable ideal. Leading an audience toward intercorporeal resonance is when art taps into something universal yet deeply personal, something raw and real that pulls us out of the everyday and into the extraordinary. But art doesn’t always need to aim for transcendence. Sometimes, the best art is simply a fucking blast. Sometimes, art is about joy, about play, about the sheer thrill of being alive. It’s about throwing your head back in laughter, dancing without caring who’s watching, and letting go of censored inhibitions. Perceiving art as a verb is about freedom—the freedom to feel, to think, to question, to let loose. And in those moments, it’s just as powerful as any masterpiece.

What our industry needs is a radical reimagining of art's definition in our lives. Art doesn’t belong only in galleries or gilded frames. Art is messy, unpredictable, and as beautifully chaotic as the world around us. Art is the pulse of humanity, and the expression of what it means to live. We don’t just observe art, we experience it, and in doing so, we rediscover ourselves. Art belongs in the streets, on the sides of buildings, in our homes, in parking lots, city parks, and the everyday spaces we inhabit. It thrives in the conversations we have with strangers, the stories we share with friends, the quiet moments, and the joyous ones that make life extraordinary. Art is in a pastor’s sermon, a quarterback’s perfect pass, a passionate teacher’s lecture, or even in the sight of a balloon drifting into the sky.

And that is why we should reconsider art as a verb. Art is action demanding engagement, and refusing to be confined. Art is not something you own; it’s something that happens to you when you see it. It’s a connection that cannot be measured or monetized. It’s the spark that ignites when creativity meets humanity. When an artist takes a risk and an audience takes the leap with them.

Art is not just a mirror reflecting the world as it is. Art is the hammer with which to shape it. It is a subversive action we take to challenge the status quo, to break down barriers, and push boundaries. We have a calling to create, to disrupt, to incite. If we compose art with this mind shift, we move beyond the idea of creating something beautiful or pleasing. We will create something redemptive and effective.

As artists, educators, and audiences, we must begin to build new language, training, and spaces that honor art as action - not just display. Let us develop practices, pedagogies, and policies that recognize resonance over reputation. If we are to treat art as a verb, then we must create systems that support art not just as a product, but as presence—living, ephemeral, relational, and deeply human.

We are participants in a revolution of thought, feeling, and action. We must stop creating for approval, and stop chasing worthiness. Instead, we create for impact. Not for applause, but for consequence. To expose hypocrisy. To question authority. To disrupt comfort. To invite critical thought. To empower underrepresented  stories. To ignite social awareness and provoke political change. This is what art as action demands of us.

A play that satirizes nationalism. A dance that reclaims public space. A student defying dress codes with their clothes. A poem spoken at a hearing confronting racism. A mural painted over a billboard exposing corporate greed. These aren’t just parts of culture—they are culture. They show that art’s power isn’t about how it looks, but where it lands, who it moves, and what it dares to say.

Considering art as a verb means recognizing art as action - sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce. Art doesn’t ask for permission. It reaches you, challenges you, and changes you.

© 2026 Josh Pohja. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.