The Sacred Art of Boredom: What a Play About Nothing Reveals About Everything

The Sacred Art of Boredom: What a Play About Nothing Reveals About Everything

In an age of relentless productivity, playwright Eliya Smith offers a radical spiritual proposition: that the most profound truths emerge not from action, but from the fertile soil of doing nothing. Her play Dad Don't Read This began as a command to her father, but evolved into a meditation on the spaces between events—the basement hours, the Sims games, the adolescent waiting that feels like eternity.

"My favorite parts of the play are when it really feels like they're doing the play for each other," Smith reflects, pointing toward a truth that mystics have long understood: that presence matters more than plot. The play's setting—boredom and Ohio, which Smith calls "synonymous"—becomes a kind of monastic cell where young souls practice the difficult art of simply being together.

This is the ancient wisdom of bitul ha-yesh, the nullification of self that allows something genuine to emerge. When we stop performing for an audience—even an audience of one watching from the title page—we discover what Smith's characters find: that the simulation of life can reveal more about life than life itself. The Sims, after all, speaks in gibberish, yet somehow communicates everything that matters.