I used to make my living as a stage actor, and I was lucky enough to do almost nothing but Shakespeare for about five years. To explain what I thought was so important about Shakespeare and theater, I often cite a scene in Al Pacino’s documentary Looking for Richard, in which a panhandler on the street tells Pacino, “Shakespeare teaches us how to feel.” So the stories I helped to tell as an actor could teach people how to feel. I loved that.
Maria Konnikova
New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova reminded us at CSICon Las Vegas that as valuable as storytelling is, as intrinsic to the human experience it is, and as much as it does to give us new insights and deeper empathy, “in the wrong hands, stories can be a force for evil.” Her topic was con artists. “Con artists are actors; they are storytellers.”