Every other week, the editors of American Theatre curate a free-ranging discussion about the lively arts in our Offscript podcast.

What do politics and theatre have in common? As we discover in our September issue, quite a bit! This week, editors Rob Weinert-Kendt, Suzy Evans, and Diep Tran discuss a recent series of stories we published about the election and how politicians are like actors, only worse. Plus, we discuss the government’snew overtime rules and how theatres are planning to respond.

Staying on the politics theme, Diep interviews composer Derrick Wang, whose opera Scalia/Ginsburg is inspired the bipartisan friendship between the two opera-loving justices. They discuss how to make legislative briefs interesting and recall the time Derrick performed his opera at the Supreme Court for his subjects. You can also read the full libretto here.

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Recommendations:

Diep recommends taking your Republican friends and family to Mike Daisey’s newest play, The Trump Card, because we’re all in this together. The monologue is coming to Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other cities across the country.

Suzy recommends you end the summer with the Public Theater‘s Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, featuring music by Shaina Taub and 200 New York City citizens.

Speaking of endings, Rob recommends more theatres take a page from #Ham4Ham and do street performances around their productions. And…here’s the final #Ham4Ham video.