Well, I certainly didn’t know my OP would hit such a nerve!
It’s good to see there are so many people out there who genuinely love seeing theaterplays, and who have seen so many very good plays
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Having lost, in recent years, a couple of the “ideals” I grew up with, I’m probably a bit oversensitive to what I perceive as pretentiousness. Any form of pretentiousness; spiritual, political or cultural pretentes that IMHO don’t yield the results they claim, or whose tenets can’t be defended in critical debate are equally annoying to me.
I thought nobody would argue that the arts aren’t an exeption to the rule in that they have their share of pretentiousness; it IS annoying for the average theatre goer, like me, to have tried out a reasonable amount of plays, found them all equally uninspiring, still see how people rave about theater, and conclude, like **Trunk **said: “Yeah right, the old 'it’s culture”-loophole defence’ ".
But that can be explained, to a very large extent, by NAF1138’s valid argument how the odds of seeing a good play outside of major theatres are just a whole lot smaller then the odds of seeing good drama on TV.
This thread has made me realize that a lot of people are really into theatre, genuinely love it, for what it is, and do their best to make the best plays they can. And I realize that for those people, it is demeaning and insulting to hear someone say: “You are in theatre? Oh, you are just filling in time untill you can work in a real movie studio, aren’t you?”.
This thread has also made me realize what my own personal taste-reasons are for not being a “theatre person”. Those reasons are entirely idiosyncratic to me, but people wondering how I could write the OP might be interested in reading them anyway. 
First, I’m not a very intimate person. Interacting with people too intensely, too emotionally, for too long a time makes me uncomfortable. Especially dealing up close with highly emotional people, make me check if there’s still a way out, so I can be safely alone again.
Books, movies and internetfora offer just the right distance to immerse myself in other peoples emotions; I can always withdraw if I feel the need to.
Theater, especially in smaller places, is far more “in your face”. The play described by Cervaise, with the blood spattered on the audience, and the general audience participation the play aims for, would leave me feeling invaded in some way, and quite possibly would freeze me right up. Somehow, it doesn’t matter that the actors are playing a role; they come too close for my taste.
Linked with the above is my aversity to a kind of emotional display that belongs in theater: stylized, yet extra strong, to reach the last row. Perhaps such somehow insincere, stylized, yet amplified emotions remind me of certain people in my life I’m rather glad I’m rid of. Of all the analogies offered by Dopers in this thread, there is one I haven’t heard yet and that aptly describes the difference betrween movie and theater to me: opera versus pop music. Both are dramatized, true. But opera is loud, and totally stylized, and limited in emotional (not musical) range. Whereas pop-music singers, because they have electronic amplification, and camera’s up close, have a far broader scope; they can whisper, groan, subtly mimic, hum, vary the volume…and that makes their emotions that much more real to me, and, as a consequence, more sincere, so I can emphatize and enter the story.
More of general interest are all the other analogies offered in this thread. Soap-opera’s versus real life; recorded music/sports versus live; handmade versus mass-produced; sex versus porn…A lot of interesting things have been said about the validity of these comparisons. As for me, most analogies don’t quite fit for me, each for very different reasons. But that’s another thread topic all in itself.
