I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms.

The line comes from an interview with Thornton Wilder published in The Paris Review (Winter 1957). In discussing what makes theater distinctive, Wilder argues that live performance has a unique immediacy and presence, and he illustrates this by pointing to enduring moments from Greek tragedy that have held audiences’ attention across generations.

Wilder is saying theater is uniquely powerful because it happens in real time in front of an audience, allowing people to recognize themselves and others through shared, immediate experience. For him, that “liveness” makes theater especially effective at conveying what human life feels like.

I regard the theater as the greatest of all art-forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.