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Sterling work from my colleague @collinshughes about theater during the last four years. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/theater/theater-in-trump-era.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Theater
This is a question I've struggled with a lot, probably since the George W. years. I think that leaders who make terrible decisions can really galvanize theater, although a lot of stuff that hits it on the nose is usually unsatisfying.
But it creates a forceful desire to come together and think through the issues these leadership provokes and how to be a human during these times.
And sometimes it doesn't provoke new work (I think of how both Sweat and What the Constitution were begun under Obama), but it fundamentally changes an audience's response to work and the work becomes even more necessary and meaningful.
So we're clear: Is it worth it? No. I would trade any number of plays I love not to have had any kids in cages. But I also think regimes like these have a galvanizing effect and make some artists more conscious of their role.
During the last four years I think there's been a gratifying uptick in plays about identity and difference and what it means to be a person who embodies difference in the face of indifferent and even hostile systems.
It's been dispiriting that this hasn't yet, for the most part, also led to meaningful changes in the leadership and structures of theaters themselves, but maybe that's changing, too.
Anyway, here's hoping for a really boring four years politically and that some great stuff comes out of it anyway.
