I have been thinking about this very thing, that all the world might just be a stage. Not all of it, of course, but certainly the bits that we are shown via our media, whichever "side" you belong to.
I myself was a life-long and stalwart liberal not so many years ago, pre-Ukraine 2014. That's when I saw the NYTimes, which I had been reading reverently for nearly forty years by then, changed its story before my very eyes on what was happening in Ukraine (Putin was a good guy one day, and a dangerous lunatic the very next), opening my mind to the possiblity that I was being told whatever was best for whatever entity was directing the show.
The director on a stage shapes the story the audience is, hopefully, enraptured by, the story the audience believes.
Our directors, rulers, governments, PTB, whatever you want to call them, have shaped a story for us to believe that benefits them, and not you and me. Our media puts on a show that enslaves our imaginations, funneling our thoughts into the rulers' pockets, so that we don't mind being slaves at all.
Freedom, like joy, is only an arm's length away. Reach out and grab it.
This is my entry to 
@wales