Hard Truths or Easy Targets? Confronting the Summer of Trump Onstage

Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, LA, is playing a revival of Alice Childress's 1955 play, "Trouble in Mind." I think it fits this debate--should be revived around the country! Pre-Civil-Rights story that revolves around theatre! And if you're in LA, be sure to catch it.

I get to honor Rabbi Noah Arnow in a Times comment by referring to his sermon which emphasized that our obligation to combat racism is the same as it was last week.

The best proof that theater has not confronted Trump adequately is that this conversation went nowhere.

It should be easy to surpass Charlottesville in terms of tragedy. Tragedy is classically about the conflicts within a single individual rather than the conflicts within society. This was how Arthur Miller interpreted it when he argued for the legitimacy of Death of a Salesman. A tragic Trump figure would be interesting but it is too soon in his presidency to portray one. I never saw "Frost/Nixon" so I can't speak to whether a tragic Nixon has been portrayed.

I can sympathize with political terror in the midst of ordinariness. When I went to synagogue yesterday, the religious school was kicking off and I read the names of various relatives who are memorialized on signs. The relatives probably always believed that America was their home. You can't take for granted that that will always last.

I have high hopes for Kushner. Angels remains one of the most compelling works of theater and political commentary I have ever seen, and while many fond The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures less satisfying, I thought it was another incredible work that provoked a great deal of reflection and thought. On his musical side, some on Broadway World say now is the time to bring back Caroline or Change and I wholeheartedly agree.

Green: "... the chaotic, unknowable figure of Trump ..."
Green: "Artists and producers are going to have to figure out how to engage Trumpism without being merely opportunistic."
Green: "Confuse us with contradictions we hadn’t considered."

Here's the play -- Trump is a "chaotic, unknowable figure", yet "Trumpism" is, according to Green, a named ideology. I consider that a confusing contradiction.

When critics advise playwrights to tell more timely, political tales, it's a little disconcerting, considering that we've a wealth of dramas and comedies, ancient through contemporary, that, in turn, engage the intellect, the heart, and our humor--all "political" in the larger and subtler sense. A fine play with sensitive acting and directing doesn't pander. (See--looook--a METAPHOR!) Not only is it anathema to any art, it's just boring.

If the story succeeds in revealing the complexity of specific humans in complex situations, the universal will take care of itself. I know theatres are anxious to interest younger audiences (I'm the AD of one), but I believe those younger patons do feel, think, and extrapolate if you trust them--and the text. Brutus's "kill him in the shell" speech is about as chillingly human, complex, and tragically relatable as you can get. "Engage Trumpism"?--what a small horizon.

If you want bells and whistles, go to the Ice Capades or a rock concert--you want polemics, go to a political event or turn on cable. You want to think and feel your humanity and that of others, go to the theatre. "French nation, British nation, iMAGination." (sorry, couldn't resist)

You might want to check out the work of The San Francisco Mime Troupe who for 58 years has been dealing with troubling aspects of the political scene in America using techniques employed by the Commedia dell'arte. Comedy, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning are their stock in trade. During the summer they tour the Parks of the San Francisco Bay Area performing for free. The rest of the year they tour nationally and internationally. Mime Troupe ("We Are Not Silent) scripts and scores are developed collectively. Joan Holden who whipped them into shape when I was with the Troupe, is one of the greatest ignored playwrights in America. Their current production, Walls, asks the question: How can a nation of immigrants declare war on immigration? The answer: Fear!. Through the years The Mime Troupe has been fearless in exploring social problems like corporate greed, the moral majority, (remember them?), the
de-industrialization of America and the other 1001 problems that can benefit from the theatrical vehicle to help carry us toward understanding and on to action. They have always agitated with art and wit for positive social change.

We could use something that has the impact like, in music, "For What It's Worth" (before it was overplayed) did in terms of galvanizing another level of action. That tune did not speak directly to the atrocity at hand and it was even ambiguous in its description of the response. But somehow, it managed to convince many of us that we had seen and heard enough.

The odds of a Trump supporter having his mind changed by enduring two hours of Michael Moore has to rank up there with hell freezing over.

Corker has given a nudge to the sludge we're dealing with in the Trump White House. It may not be the first nudge, but it is represents a bellwether for Trump and his administration.
He's either going to have to morph into a sane, responsible President or he's going to be nibbled to death.
The guy's not merely out of tough.
He's unable to break out of that 7-year-old's habit of playing Superman. 50 years ago, we would have asked to see his dorm room and search for a pipe, dope and pills.
Today, we don't have the luxury of that step-by-step exploration of his emotional and mental history.
Would you want your son or daughter heading out at night in your car moments after he's thumped his chest and proclaimed he has perfect foresight and hindsight and then vomited nonsensical comments about his having found himself by saying whatever popped into his mind?
Nah.
He has issues. We got good glimpses of them, too, during the run up to the election. Did you really grin and say to yourself this is my man?
Or were you putting down your last Bud?
Face it.
The guy's not all there.

Of course these artistic efforts should continue, but navel gazing , gerrymandered, single party, self referential, narcissistic metro NYC needs to realize its just a small slice of America. Not everyone goes to the "theatre" , reads the Sunday NY Times, or shops at Zabars, cares about fashion, or is OK with high taxes and rapid social change. The change the political dynamic does not mean capitulating to new nazis, it does mean making a genuine tolerant effort to those who aren't acculturated into the bicoastal, liberated, unconventional gestalt political ethic. It's self defeating to drive devout Christians who do not hate anyone into staying home on Election Day but dismissing them as Wahoos, deplorables, etc., or to vilify someone who is tolerant of minorities, atheists, homosexuals, but dont want their child to marry one. It wasn't the new nazi turnout that pushed trump over the top in Penna, Michigan or Wisconsin, it was the independent vote that , while hardly bigoted, is not at the cultural social vanguard of our nation. If you don't respect these people we might be stuck with trump for eight years. It also would help if we recognize there is always going to be the risk of losing a general election in this closely divided electorate when you field a candidate that has enriched herself on the back of her government positions and lies 35% of the time, even though her opponent lies 70 % of the time and has been a ruthless and evasive huckster.

Most of the criticism of Trump has been so violent and extremely vulgar that it causes violent and vulgar responses. And we're living through it now... and sadly into the future. And the worst part of it... so much of it seems gratuitous and done for ratings by our late night hosts and web based news sites. And considering how we all have become so overly sensitive... both right and left... we might be heading for a place in our history where we don't want to go.

I had the good fortune to see The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Brecht at the Donmar Warehouse in London. A political satire originally aimed at Hitler, a few minor changes created a play that remains relevant today. I doubt anyone there were radicalized by the show, but it allowed for a moment of reprieve from the horror that is politics today. It also reminded us that despots have existed throughout history. Political satire is part of the theatrical fabric. No one has done it better than Bertol Brecht, who's works are timeless.

What the alt-right is saying: "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious by this son of...."

SNL has lampooned Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. But neither is very funny.

What about taking on Ivanka and Jared Kushner, SNL? The photo that accompanies the article below shows perfectly what a morally-bankrupt, spineless couple these two are.

"Jewish Trump Staff Silent on His Defense of Rally With Anti-Semitic Marchers" By MICHAEL D. SHEAR AUG. 16, 2017

President Trump is not funny. And he's not entertaining anymore. He's a nightmare for our nation. I'm not happy paying federal taxes to a government that doesn't care about people and I have no interest in paying money to get more aggravated about our President - who is embarrassing the world. PAUL FEINER, Greenburgh

I would prefer if we ignored him ( especially the press ) wherever possible.

The true goings on are in the Congress and we need to keep track of what they are doing . ( especially when they take votes in the middle of the night )

Let him play golf as much as he wants for the next 3 years and then vote him ( and all republicans ) out of office. We might get some justice and have him removed sooner if Mueller comes up with Russian collusion.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
( for voting him in )

“Et tu, Brute?”, please let me hear it again!

I would prefer if we ignored him ( especially the press ) wherever possible.

The true goings on are in the Congress and we need to keep track of what they are doing . ( especially when they take votes in the middle of the night )

Let him play golf as much as he wants for the next 3 years and then vote him ( and all republicans ) out of office. We might get some justice and have him removed sooner if Mueller comes up with Russian collusion.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
( for voting him in )

I think you have been misreading Michael Moore's intentions with his show...he was pushing the idea that "one man can make a difference" and used the examples of incidents in his life, stories of which I was not aware of and were pretty inspiring.

I think the Richard Nelson plays at the Public captured how it feels to be a citizen in the US today. I'd be happy to attend more of the same - Nelson isn't preaching to the choir - he's managing to gather what it is to be in the choir and somehow get it on stage.

A fair summary of this discussion is that the New York Theater world has largely failed to step up the challenge of producing plays that provide the sort of exploration or insight into what Trump's presidency means to the country that one would expect from so many talented people.

Maybe the NY theater world should look outwards, such as to Red State playwrights, for a perspective/sensibility apparently lacking in these productions. Another problem could be that theater companies plan too far ahead, and thus move slowly, like a lumbering ship.

Works of great art usually possess an inherently ironic character (contradictions, paradoxes, ambiguities of meaning) that resist easy and definitive readings or conclusions, while lesser works of art lack that quality and lend themselves to ironic criticism. This explains why so much political theater, for me, is so often tedious and dull - no matter how sympathetic the cause it propounds.

So much political theater is an exercise in self-congratulation, in commending ourselves for being outraged by and opposed to [name your cause]. Subtlety, complexity, conflicting aims, actions and results give way to After-School-Special lessons trotted out by an issue's advocates for their ticket-paying acolytes, for whom a sense of moral righteousness and superiority is a balm worth paying admission for.

Such pieces of political theater (or political art of any kind) traffic in the obvious, the over-stated and the inarguable - perhaps fine for dinner table conversations, but hardly the stuff that comprises great art.

It's silly. It's preaching to the choir. Practically everyone who goes to the theater to see these shows already despises Trump, so these plays are not going to change anyone's mind. It's just self-congratulatory preaching to the liberal choir. Waste of time.

I'd love to see some conservative plays that take on the liberal establishment, and the PC police. That would make a great play. But it would never get produced in NY.

All politics is theater. Reagan, Bill Clinton, and John Paul II were good actors, and FDR was supreme. Too bad today's Dems are mostly unaware of this and too often approach their audience like scolding preachers or book club moderators.

These fine plays are mostly, as another comment notes, preaching to the choir. But perhaps some of the Democratic leadership will see them and be reminded of what they need to do: better theater.

Please check out Ashland, Oregon's Shakespeare's Festival production of Julius Caesar. It runs in the Angus Bowmer Theater until October 29. It is powerfully
nuanced and includes the role of the mob in a way that I don't see mentioned in the reviews of the Central Park production.

Someone HAS written a fabulous, deep, and hilariously funny--Trump era play, namely Robert Askins of Hand to God fame. Askins describes "The Squirrels" as a play about "the greatest squirrel in the greatest tree in the greatest forest in all the land[, who] will not share his nuts."

Theater-junkie that I am, I was privileged to attend a reading of The Squirrels at The Lark, and it was truly cathartic.

Glad they're doing this, but it's "preaching to the choir".

Perhaps it's not technically a summer play, but I'm surprised by the omission of "Oslo" in this conversation. Perhaps its quiet, somewhat plodding style makes it easy to overlook in the hot take urgency of our times. I saw it in June and was moved by its vision of patient, deliberative diplomacy, of bridging polarized groups, of working for peace, however incrementally. It felt like a distant political land that perhaps we might return to some day.

Who needs theater when we have Trump as Caesar and Kushner as Brutus in real life for the "right" and Silicon Valley and Wall Street "liberals" for the left distracting everyone with their political correctness with acts such as tearing down historical statues or fretting over transgender bathrooms, this as they tear apart middle class America with "disruptive" business models and Merger and Acquisition activities that destroy jobs and lives while they line their pockets, and create out of whole cloth a new Cold War with Russia while lining up Iran in their bomb sights. A bigger bunch of phonies I have never seen. Trumps original message that got him elected of bringing jobs back to America, detangling us from the cost of other people's wars and fixing health care is being completely swept aside by neo liberals and neo cons. But let's continue the conversation of tearing down statues that are part of our history as Bezos renders another million people's jobs useless, and our debt ceiling is raised to accommodate increased defense spending and tax cuts for the rich, where are you there Pelosi and Feinstein, the silence is deafening.

the "overts" like j.c. in the park are reductions, that they have some impact on audiences who by their insurance from guys who "leave the seat up intentionally" to assert themselves speaks to a need for such guidance.

those "indirects" which leave conclusion to reflection and inference show more respect for both play and audience...ms nottage's "portrait of blue-collar discontent" has strokes...while others like schenkkan's "...wall" are monochrome splashes.

the trend is to preclude debate with piror conclision, hardly a tool of inquiry or engagement, so it's thumbs up (but a ticket) or thumbs doen't (stay home)...sad stuff.

nor are closely drawn metaphors hostile to debate, the best of those (odets, orwell) succeed because of the strength of their characters, persons with whose plights we engage for a journey.

the nyt critics are right to caution against "old hat...polemic" (green) and reduction of mimesis to memeisis, if you will, (brantley).

beginning any exchange with a conclusion pretty much precludes exchange, whether debate or the sad, tepid euphemism, "conversation" which, in practice (look around) means "let's talk about it over lunch."

michael moore is the biggest disappointment, once in class by himself now, like the freshman who topped his class with his first A+ essay and has been sinking, each year, handing in the same paper, until it's grade (sophomore B, Junior C) became a senior F...is, well...still in a class by himself.

Trump onstage won't change our brutus ignoramus, but it may open minds previously blinded by ignorance and prejudice.