Can we be changed by being absorbed?

"Through being spectators to the theatrum mundi of civil society, engaged but not absorbed watchers, we bring our whole experience to bear on what is seen without insisting on sameness as a criterion of worth." -Davis, "Theatricality and Civil Society"

Via fanpop.com, original image from Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea

For me, one of the great qualities of art, especially narrative art, is that it sometimes allows you to leave yourself and become wholly absorbed in experiences and personalities that are alien to your own. Nowhere is this more true than in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, where the experience of otherness can be more pure. You can briefly see through the eyes of someone whose experiences and being are truly alien to your own.

In Ursula K. Le Guin's young adult Earthsea novels, an absorbed watcher catches a glimpse of this great and beautiful otherness when the character Ged speaks of dragons, who are substantially different beings than humans:

"The dragons! The dragons are avaricious, insatiable, treacherous; without pity, without remorse. But are they evil? Who am I, to judge the acts of dragons? . . . They are wiser than men are. It is with them as with dreams, Arren. We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are." -The Farthest Shore, p. 48

Ged has a profound respect and awe of this otherness:

"He was silent for a while and then went on, 'And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.'" -The Farthest Shore, p. 49

Davis' article suggests that is only through my recognition of theatricality in this work that I am able to appreciate this otherness and allow it to change my experience. If I am wholly absorbed, I lose my autonomy and agency to change. I'm not sure yet how I think about Davis' argument, but I think that often we are not changed by a rational Brechtian decision, but by an Artaudian visceral experience, and I have most often felt myself changed after I was most absorbed.

When were you most affected by a work of art or drama or literature, and how do you perceive that change taking place within yourself?