“If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.”

—  Arthur Miller

Collected Plays (1958) Introduction, Section 2
Context: My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

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Arthur Miller 147
playwright from the United States 1915–2005

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