Once a month, Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal; Elisabeth Vincentelli, contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker; and Peter Marks of the Washington Post get together to talk about what’s going on in the American theatre.

This week, we talk to Brooke Ishibashi, Carson Elrod, and Jenny Makholm, co-organizers of Be An Arts Hero, an “intersectional grassroots campaign” pushing the Senate to allocate proportionate relief to the arts and culture sector of the American economy. We discuss the enormous economic importance of arts and culture in the U.S., the staggering number and variety of jobs in every state that comprise this sector, and the catastrophic cost of the absence of immediate government relief specifically earmarked for the arts.

The critics then discuss their picks, which include Imitating the Dog’s adaptation of Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare in the Park’s Much Ado About Nothing, and the Democratic National Convention.

Content warning: Suicide is mentioned between the timestamps 42:10 and 43:00.

Download the episode here.

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Have comments or requests for what the critics should talk about? Email them at threeontheaisle@gmail.com, or go to @ThreeOnTheAisle on Twitter.