Pulling Focus
The challenge for artists: to keep our attention on human stories and larger questions, not on our distractor-in-chief.
Category Archives: Theatre in the Age of Trump
As the one-year anniversary of the momentous 2016 U.S. election approaches, we look at how our nation’s theatremakers are responding to what many are experiencing as a surreal new era of crisis, controversy, retrenchment, and resistance. What do the arts have to say about where we’ve been, how we got here, and what comes next?
Speaking Truth to Trumpism
Plays on some pet presidential subjects—immigration, U.S. history, the presidency itself—stir uneasy new resonances.
Wide Awake in America
Why Suzan-Lori Parks decided to write a play every day during Trump’s first 100 days
The View From the Middle
In a state that tipped red decisively in 2016, the opportunity for theatrical dialogue across divides seems ripe and freshly urgent.
Trump-ocalypse Now?
American plunder didn’t begin with this administration. Our theatrical dissent must be grounded in a holistic critique of state violence.
Enter Stage Right
Conservative theatremakers, some emboldened by Trump’s election, look for inroads onstage.
In Search of the Resistance
For artists like Double Edge Theatre, Jean Claude van Itallie, and Bread & Puppet Theatre, theatrical protest is a tradition, not a trend.
The Resistance Runs Deep
How our polarized political moment puts the spotlight on the social and cultural work of many theatremakers.
