There are fundamental principles of storytelling that supersede the differences in our chosen mediums; most stories boast a protagonist, in conflict with himself or others. Most share the same classical shape, and begin with an incident that rises steadily until it climaxes in a resolution, and fades in a denouement. And most are crafted around some core truth which the author has discovered; something so poignant, so irresistible, so inevitable and so enlightening that he (or she) felt compelled to write it down, rather than endure the terrible stress of knowing it alone; that parents nurture and torture their children in equal measure; that war in pursuit of peace is oxymoronic; that love can be curative and damning at the same time.

We write in hopes of discovering that the nightmares that taunt us are shared ones.

We write because it is more remunerative than penning suicide notes sometimes.

We write to bind ourselves to our fellow man, and, as Hemingway said--to forge a link between the living, the dead, and those as yet unborn.

So, with those commonalities in our favor, I hope you'll grant this playwright some rope, as I attempt to illuminate the value of old-fashioned storytelling in an era obsessed with the sound-byte, the gigabyte, and the weekend gross. I'm convinced in the Age of White Noise that drama still exists, with all the potential for terror, pity and catharsis that Aristotle promised us; we just have to know where to look.

I'd like to describe three recent live theatrical experiences that I had the privilege of witnessing not too long ago.

The First:

I'm seated in a plush red seat, in a gorgeous ninety-five million dollar coliseum, seventh row center. Behind me, three-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine other eager spectators. Clutched in my quivering palms, a heavily laminated souvenir program. Its glossy text makes a promise on page one: "Tonight, you will experience a journey like no other, a show that sets a new standard for entertainment excellence." On its rear cover, the immortal words: €˜Presented by Chrysler: Drive and Love." In the contoured drink-holder on the arm of my seat, a souvenir plastic glass emblazoned with the words "A New Day." In my lap, purchased from the concession stand outside, from a man dressed like an organ monkey, a box of gourmet jellybeans. Flavors like almond, passion fruit and guava. In front of me, a couple, newly arrived, takes their seats. He wears a tuxedo. She is a study in fringe. All around me, excited titters. I am primed. I am ready. Houselights dim. The show begins.

On a giant, rear-projection LED screen some four thousand square feet wide, an image appears. A woman descends an enormous stair; not a real woman, not Our Star, but a digitalized one. When she reaches the landing, in a puff of smoke, she morphs into flesh and blood. The Diva Herself has seized the stage. Her slender arms rise in flight; her voice arcs to achieve an impossible note, and the first of many Power Ballads begins.

I had to escape
The city was sticky and cruel
Maybe I should have called you first
But I was dying to get to you
I was dreaming while I drove
The long straight road ahead, uh, huh

Could taste your sweet kisses
Your arms open wide
This fever for you is just burning me up inside

I drove all night to get to you

Is that all right?

I drove all night 

Crept in your room

Woke you from your sleep

To make love to you

Is that all right?

I drove all night 

"Drive and Love!" indeed. A chorus of twenty female acrobats, feathered like silver peacocks, rappels from the ceiling. A phalanx of shirtless men leaps like antelopes from the wings. A staircase on a hydraulic lift swivels out of the floor, and the audience erupts in an explosion of applause. True catharsis? Aristotle's terror and pity? Not exactly; we're more like gluttons at a Roman banquet, greedy for the next course.

For the next ninety-minutes, to a non-stop, mind-numbing, monochromatic score played by an orchestra housed beneath the stage at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Celine Dion implores us to love her. Her arms jettisoned toward us in the dark, her fingers groping, the veins in her neck about to snap like so many rubber bands, she craves our adulation. And we grant it. Not to satiate her. At two hundred dollars a ticket, we whoop and cry "bravo" in the Sisyphean hope we can, somehow, in the face of so much patently synthetic, Pavlovian emotion“-satisfy ourselves.