Voto:
No, in my opinion, this time you're reaching too far.
"Entertainment is theater, with those 'actors' who portray someone else and rush around, shouting, from one side of the stage to the other, possessed by some form of dementia." I couldn't disagree more: an actor (a real actor, mind you! Not one of those who feign emotions or subtext) brings a lot of themselves to the stage, and that’s why interpretation is so important—precisely because of how an actor embodies the character, what they add of themselves to the character, and how they convey it back to the audience. The stage is (or should be) the only place where one doesn't lie (for everything else, there's daily life).
"C.B.'s 'religion,' where there’s a certainty of a lack of devoted proselytism, revels in solitude." I disagree: C.B. was a great master, but he wanted and knew how to ensnare the masses, and the work in question (which is a masterpiece) is paradigmatic of the formula for how to irresistibly capture attention: divide it.
If we talk about "reveling in solitude," then what can be said of a Beckett or a Sarah Kane?
It seems to me that you’re bending Salome to your personal philosophy, but personally, I see this work for what it is: a work.
You want radicals in art? To me, they are those who, while knowing how to master the craft, choose to use artistic expression not as a means to an artistic product, but as an end to reach something else (that something else that you call "connection with the invisible," and I can call reconnection with the authentic self).
Examples?
Paul Valéry, who, riding the wave of popularity (in terms of both public and critical acclaim), chose to withdraw from the literary world for 20 years because: "What men call a superior being is a being who has made a mistake. To marvel at him, one must see him, and to be seen, he must show himself. This shows me that he is possessed by the silly mania of his own renown. For this reason, every great man is marked by an error. Every spirit that is considered powerful begins with the error that makes it known."
And he privately wrote his "Notebooks," which were published posthumously and bear witness to an artist of the highest caliber who had convinced himself of the necessity of silence.
Then there was Grotowski, who, starting from his theater workshops, at one point—after someone like Peter Brook had championed his works—chose to do something revolutionary: he eliminated the audience.
Using theatrical means, his workshops pursued the aim of true permanent pagan rituals.
This is to say that the product will always be, first and foremost, a product; research is something else and, in some ways, is even more interesting than the product and can go in the opposite direction: that of the non-product.
Art (the work, thus the product), for me, does not explain life, does not connect us with the invisible, but can, like many other things, help us reconnect with our true self, which is in relation to the "things" of the world.
Proust said that there’s no difference if what stimulates us is a book, fishing, or a walk: he was absolutely right.