When defamiliarization turns into a fact of life it no longer evokes perceptibility; on the contrary, it blurs the perception of reality. When theatricalization of life becomes a device of political manipulation it no longer encourages our "will to play;" rather, it becomes deadly. The only solution—and it is not a simple one—for the practitioners and theorists of theatricality and estrangement, is to radically reinvent their means in order to deautomatize consciousness and counteract alienation in political, social, cultural, and artistic reality.