UCSB Arts & Lectures presents an evening with America's most buzzed-about therapist.
WORDS Ninette Paloma
“Couples therapy is the best theatre in town.”
Esther Perel is surveying a crowd of over 2,000 who have filed into Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theater for a two-hour inner shakedown. Bypassing formalities, she blazes through a succession of prompts before the theatre seats have warmed: Raise your hand if you were forced to come here tonight; Raise your hand if you are in a satisfying relationship; Raise your hand if you are having an affair. The rest of the evening plays out in a similar cadence, with Perel plucking questions and testimonials from the mouths of brave audience members while ruminating over the monologues beneath the dialogue. “I don’t have the answers,’ she insists, “but I can suggest a few things that will help make sense of the stories we tell ourselves.” The room reads like a Gillian Flynn novel, thick with anticipation and humming with not-too-subtle panic. At the center of it all, darting up and down the aisles in a satin pantsuit, is America’s most buzzed about therapist and wow does she know how to arouse a crowd.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of Perel or her two best-selling books on erotic intelligence or the fact that she made Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100 list of influential leaders. Truth is, she’s no stranger to the long game, having stood patiently at the intersection of sex, gender, and relational storytelling for decades now, waiting for the rest of us to pull up. The presenters have even forgiven you for, once again, overlooking the latter portion of their moniker (hello, it’s UCSB Arts & Lectures) as you rushed to secure a Dance Series subscription because, frankly, there were no tickets left to sell. Rumor has it, the heat surrounding Perel’s sold-out event was fueled by a network of Central Coast book clubs and wellness groups that snapped up seats within hours of their release. You never really stood a chance against the Perel Posse.
Inspired by the sociological concept of collective effervescence – the kind of energy you feel at say, a rock concert – Perel launched her tour last year to great acclaim, describing a clear vision to bring “people together to experience something unique, intense, that has a purpose and that creates a feeling of belonging so that at the end of the evening, basically, you say to yourself: this is where I needed to be and nowhere else.” Add to that the elemental appeal of risk, when the emotional willingness of a collective is uncertain, the subject matter vulnerable, and you have all the essentials for a transformational experience. On Tuesday night, attendees may have been carrying the weight of another round of regional and devastating fires when they walked into the theatre, but the warm exchanges and candid dialogue fluttering through the crowd signaled a commitment to presence and place. Esther Perel had made a house call, and everyone seemed eager to receive her. The rest is pillow talk, and you just really had to be there.
