Bush II, Part II: What's the Theater to Do?

Look closely at the blue/red electoral map of the U.S. and you may be able to detect extra blue shading around the theaters in New York City. If evangelical Christians are George W. Bush's base, New York's theater artists and audiences could be considered his anti-base. As Edward Albee told the audience at a recent Drama Desk panel about social change and theater, in his five decades working in the theater he has "never met a serious creative artist that was anything but a liberal Democrat."

So where does that leave politically charged theater artists now that Bush is beginning, amid $40 million worth of fanfare this week in Washington, a second term as president? In the heat of the campaign, many of them turned their art into activism last year: Off-off-Broadway offered up a myriad shows with such titles as Dementia Presidentia, Laura's Bush and "I'm Gonna Kill the President!" while higher-profile productions—among them Tim Robbins' Embedded, the docudrama Guantanamo, Sam Shepard's God of Hell and Sigourney Weaver and John Lithgow in A.R. Gurney's Mrs. Farnsworth—tackled personalities and policies of the Bush administration, and antiwar plays from Lysistrata to Idiot's Delight to Hair were revived.

While Bush's victory in November did extend the life of many political plays that their own creators had hoped would become outdated, left-leaning theater artists are not spinning the election as anything but a setback. "Many of us felt like we got a swift blow in the stomach and got the wind knocked out of us on that November night," says Todd Rosen, managing director of the Flea Theater, which produced Mrs. Farnsworth. "It will take some time for us to recover and refocus our energy. We respond to our surroundings and feelings with our hearts—it's just our hearts are a bit broken now." (A less-delicate diagnosis comes from Jamil Ellis of the comedy troupe etc…, who reports that it took his company's George W. Bush portrayer "a while before he could do his impersonation again without feeling like he was going to vomit.")

Despite the election defeat, politically minded artists feel they gained a lot—in exposure, creativity, purpose—from their busy year. "We found our political voice, increased our audience, and we discovered how to really dig deep into the issues of the day and write and perform meaningful material," says Ellis.

Artists plan to build on the momentum, and one of their new objectives is to keep their art from being ghettoized. "'Political' has replaced 'partisan' as a kind of derogatory catch-all, and left-wing activists and artists have been labeled 'political' in such a way that it implies emotional and intellectual immaturity," says Adriano Shaplin, who wrote and acted in Pugilist Specialist, a military drama that was performed last year in New York, San Francisco and London.

Tony Kushner, who took on Reaganism with Angels in America and has been developing a Bush/Iraq opus called Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, assails the criticism that's most commonly invoked to dismiss political theater: that it "preaches to the choir." He says this tag comes from "people who want art to avoid articulating political concerns and are afraid to say that, so they call political art useless or lazy… What's really troubling such people after having seen partisan political theater of the left is that in a theater a lot of progressive people have gathered and for once haven't been made to feel that a progressive view of things is outdated, quaint, lunatic-fringe-y."

In trying to ghettoize political theater, critics have created a false dichotomy, according to Shaplin. "Someone, somewhere created this odd juxtaposition between art which 'speaks to the human heart' and art that simply 'rants,'" he explains. "Well, I say that Sleepless in Seattle is a two-hour rant about the joys of heterosexuality, and Hotel Rwanda is a two-hour rant about how important American military intervention is to world stability." He adds: "Agitational propaganda might be out of fashion, but it has a longer and deeper tradition than melodrama."

"Political theater" may be a spurious label anyway, according to two Pulitzer laureates. "There's politics in everything, but that doesn't mean that everything has to be explicitly political," says Kushner. "Theater artists should do whatever they feel they need to do to entertain and to tell the truth—and for some of us that's inseparable from politics." Edward Albee commented at the Drama Desk panel: "Political theater is more complex than most people think. All serious theater is at its heart and mind sociopolitical. It is there to hold a mirror up to people. Theater doesn't have to be noticeably aggressive to be political. Only frivolous, escapist entertainment refuses to concern itself with our problems."

The idea that all art is political may be especially valid at a time of tremendous divisiveness and controversy over the war and other initiatives by the government. Writing about war "is no more a 'political' act than a playwright who chooses to ignore the war entirely and write about a goofy nanny," says Shaplin. "The very act of representation is political and has real consequences in the world." Karen Finley, the playwright and performer who also works in the visual arts, concurs: "What I'm surprised at is a lot of art is frivolous and nonpolitical. That's a political statement too. You'd think more people would take the opportunity to do something daring."

Those who choose to deal with explicitly sociopolitical topics in theater foresee a shift in subject matter now that the election has passed. "The country had a choice to make and it made it, for better or for worse, so there are deeper currents that are running below that," says Greg Kotis, Tony-winning lyricist/librettist of Urinetown. "That's where my mind will be, not so much on who should be occupying the White House but who are we now, what is our identity now." David Herskovits, artistic director of Target Margin Theater, which considered war and religion in last spring's The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, is thinking along the same lines. "What does the election teach us about the American electorate, which is to say, our audience?" he says. "Right now, I am just trying to read as many of the very diverse opinions and analyses of recent history as I can."

Ken Terrell, the director of Dementia Presidentia, also agrees: "The Bush inaugural is an inspiration to do more political theater, but to aim it toward the voters rather than at the current occupant of the White House." He continues, "This election reminded me of why we do political theater—it gives a voice to challenging the status quo. But I want it to be a mirror of the voters instead of a lampoon of a leader. I am more concerned about the followers of George Bush. They saw the debates…and still voted for him."

"The morning after the election," recalls Timothy Nolan, author of the life-in-the-age-of-terror snapshot Wrong Barbarians, which was featured in last summer's New York Fringe Festival, "I woke up and thought, 'Well, this is our country now.' I don't like it, but it is what it is. That's where I think work may go now, where it could do some good now: showing things for how they are, leaving people with 'Is this really what it is? Is this really what we want?'"

Others say they had already broadened their focus before the election, in the interests of creating more substantive work. The comic writer/performers of etc… had depicted Jesus Christ challenging Bush for the presidency in their summer production, Apocalypse! Book One, but Ellis says, "We never thought of our show as merely an anti-Bush tirade. It was a satire of the media's complacency, the indecision of the Democratic Party and the isolation people feel in today's current political climate." Jeff Matson, cocreator of a cabaret act called The Question W Revue, says his show "also addressed the corporate media, religious fundamentalism, gay marriage and other topics. One can only find so many ways to say 'Bush sucks' and make it entertaining. I also think that beneath the anger and frustration there must be a sense of hope and a conviction that political dissent is an essential part of what makes democracy possible and desirable."

With the immediacy of the election past, playwrights and performers can take time to create higher-quality theater. Kotis, whose current off-Broadway lark, Eat the Taste, is about John Ashcroft's musical theater debut, acknowledges, "The feveredness of the campaign probably kept people from writing at the top of their ability as dramatists. There was a cause they were serving, and it was a moment to say, I'm not going to work so hard to create a fully realized piece. The urgency of the campaign made political theater more broad and more polemical. It wasn't as interested in character development as it was in saying: Here's how we feel about this thing, and we're people who write for the stage so we're going to use that forum in order to express that and cheer on our side.

"But theater is at its best when it's dealing with people as three-dimensional creatures, because what theater does best is explore individuals," Kotis continues. Now that Bush is installed for another term, he says, "I think people will return to the natural strength of what theater can do to explore the issues that the campaign was about."

Nolan, the playwright who's also cofounder of a theater company called Present Tense Productions, says election-year theater that mostly lampooned Bush and his cohorts and portrayed them in absurd situations "may have some funny bits, but on the whole it does all the thinking for you. That's not a satisfying theater experience."

"What is to be achieved in lambasting as easy a target as Dubya?" adds Adam B. Mathias, whose musical The Passion of George W. Bush was presented at the Fringe. "A new target must be found. That new enemy is not George W. Bush, but the mindset which he and his administration represent. This is what must be overthrown in the next election."

Don't discount the value of humor in political art, thougH. Rosen praised his company's election-year hit, Mrs. Farnsworth, because it "tackled the subject in the most accessible and wonderful way—with great humor." John Herin, Mathias' collaborator on The Passion, points out, "A lot of people voted for Bush out of fear. When they start laughing at him, he's finished."

Whatever direction political theater takes postelection, it is undiminished by Bush's win. "Adversity is the natural condition of the theater," states Herskovits of Target Margin. "We thrive in it; you could even say we have chosen it. Being in opposition gets us up in the morning." Alex Goldberg, co-author of Election Day, a new musical currently playing off-Broadway, adds: "If anything, Bush's victory has added fuel to the fire and ire of political theater. When people are complacent, we see safer theater and performance choices, like boy bands." Alexis Sottile, an actress and playwright who's involved with the coalition THAW (Theaters Against War), says she and her colleagues will draw on theater's most hallowed strength: "The show must go on, and the spirit of this theater community is nothing if not plucky."

Bush's second term could stimulate theaters as much as or more than the campaign did. "Artists are seeking new ways to be subversive, and that's where the fun starts," proclaims Hamilton Clancy, artistic director of the Drilling Company, a THAW member. "It's no longer just seasonal, it's a regular flow." Nolan remarks, "It's an irony, but a bad election result gives us a new lease on life."

Mixed in with grief and anger over the election's outcome are pride and motivation from what political theater did achieve during the campaign season. "We inspired a lot of hardworking peaceniks and got out the word to a lot of fence-sitters and scared the hell out of a lot of neocons," says Crystal Field, executive director of Theater for the New City, a downtown mainstay for socially conscious work.

"Unlike never before in a time of unrest, the theater community has brought others together and expressed the rage in uniquely humorous ways that are beyond the dismissal of the right and even get a few laughs," says Clancy. "We awakened a network, we enlivened conversation among the youngest voters, and we created a sense of common purpose that reminded others there is community in opposition to dictatorial tactics."

"Political theater brought to the public the horrors of war, greed and personal agendas," says J.L. Sanchez Jr., executive producer of Necropolis, Don Nigro's drama about a chance but fateful encounter between a journalist and a sniper that had an off-off-Broadway run last May. "It further showed that people are people all over the world with basic needs and desires, and it's the politicians that put the roadblocks in that thwart world harmony and coexistence."

Finley commends her peers not only for their social conscience but also for thriving under great financial pressure. "They're not going away, and they're being strong," she says. "Right now, just because of the economic climate, for artists just creating and keeping the doors open has been difficult."

Over the past couple of years, political theater has played a key role in democracy. It "brought issues of public concern to audiences in different and compelling ways," says Kelly Van Zile, producing director of the Joint-ed Stock Theatre Alliance, which is presenting Election Day. "We heard voices of friends and foes that reminded us that it is important to see beyond what the media tells us. So many people take a passive role in our social climate. The pieces of political theater this year encourage us all to be active—to make our voice heard."

These accomplishments have boosted theater's reputation in general. "Just for the fact so much was/is being produced, I feel it must, on some level, make clear to the public that whether or not they're willing to listen, the artistic community has very strong opinions and they are going to do all they can to make them known," says Robert Driemeyer, cocreator of Dear George, a play (which has been performed in 20-plus states during the last year) whose script is derived from real letters written to Bush, by his fans as well as detractors. Scott Morfee, producer of Eat the Taste and the Obie-winning Bug, says all the politically themed work "re-established the fact that theater can be of the moment and that playwrights are an important part of our cultural and political lives."

Recent political plays can even have an impact on history, according to Herin. "Artists can get a jump on the historians by framing today's issues in a way that reflects progressive concerns," he says. "Art can help to shape the way that we collectively remember the past and interpret the present. The theater community should take the lead in shaping Dubya's legacy while we're also working to stifle his second-term agenda." Herin cites a precedent: It was Arthur Miller and other writers for stage and film who "helped to ensure that a majority of Americans would remember Joseph McCarthy as a dangerous creep," he says.

Kushner, however, cautions against overstating theater's potential influence. In terms of effecting government change, "plays don't do that, really, except on the rarest of occasions and usually only in countries so repressive that a theater event can become a rallying place and generate action directly," he says. "The impact of art isn't measurable in that sense. Art adds its bits to the debate, to the way a society is thinking about things. It's power but an indirect power."

Pugilist Specialist's Shaplin also admits that "it's difficult for an inherently local art form to tackle global issues and somehow show results." He adds, "That said, I believe that theater artists possess an extraordinary creative and financial freedom because we work on such a small scale and in relative obscurity."

Newly emboldened artists should take their concerns outside the theater, Kushner advises. "I think artists should try to do their activism mixed in with the general population," he says. "Groups [of artists] too often wind up showcasing theater work, which isn't the point of activism. I like working for and, frankly, under people who are really well-informed and experienced activists, who know how to do this kind of work better than I can."

In going forward, playwrights and producers must venture outside New York to potentially hostile territory, a.k.a. Bush country. "Clearly there needs to be more of a voice to reach the heartland of America," says John Jeter, whose Watergate-era play Dirty Tricks ran at the Public last fall. "While live theater is not typically the conduit to reach the masses, it can start discussions and educate. Theater cannot do it alone. In many ways it is the 'grassroots' approach to enlightenment. It can inspire avenues that do reach vast audiences such as television, film and the music industry."

But theatrical lefties must respect Bush voters as subjects as well as prospective audiences. "One thing I would hope the election debacle would bring about is a realization that not everyone feels the way we feel in New York or in the blue states in general. And these people aren't stupid, or uneducated, or selfish," says Nolan. "They have their own fears and concerns. We would do better to understand people, and then show people what can happen when they let themselves be ruled by fear."

"When you are examining a political issue though art, the issues does not need to be labeled or pushed," says Kelly Van Zile. "It is an iceberg of which we only explore the tiniest tip. The personal reveals the political." Her Election Day director, Laurie Sales, mentions as an example the 1984 play Open Admissions, about a black student and his white professor, which Sales recently directed for the Drama League. "It didn't tell; it showed and explored and revealed," she says. "That is what good political theater does. It holds a mirror up to society and lets us all take a look."

Those creating politically themed theater today are carrying on a custom practiced by illustrious forebears. "Theater shows how rhetoric is put at the service of very basic human ambitions, whether it be lust or ambition or wanting to stay alive," says Kotis. "Shakespeare is full of that: people who speak poetically and eloquently about one thing but really mean another." Clancy says that when the Drilling Company selects material, "we look for action and interaction—the human kind. These are fundamental ingredients to any play. For a person to express their opinion poetically in a context of action and reaction is in keeping with the traditions of great dramatists such as Shaw and Molière."

Mathias goes back even further in theater history. "Not that theater should preach one moral or political viewpoint; its role is to question, to unsettle, to invigorate the moral debate," he says. "If political theater was good enough for Aristophanes, it's good enough for us."

Finley makes similar references when discussing her 2004 play George & Martha (in which Bush was portrayed by an actor nude except for red, white and blue body paint), which dealt as much with Dubya's daddy issues as with his politics. "I was interested in the Bush dynasty as artistic material," says Finley. "The dynasty is very Shakespearean, or very Greek, with power and tragedy and war going hand-in-hand."

Finley and others blame commercial producers for avoiding provocative material so as to reach the widest audience possible. "On Broadway they don't want to think about terrorism and war. That's too depressing to bring people here," says Finley. Nonetheless, she did see something on Broadway this season that she considers supremely political: the kiss between two male lovers at the very end of La Cage Aux Folles (in the original 1980s production, they just embraced). Martin Richards—who produced both the original La Cage and the current revival—said at the Drama Desk panel that he's been surprised by the nonreaction (other than applause) to that kiss, even in audiences presumably filled with red-state tourists. Giving hope that politically aware theater has a commercial future, Richards—who has produced three Tony-winning Best Musicals—announced, perhaps only slightly facetiously, about the Bush team: "I would really like to do anything anyone writes that would scare some of these bastards!"

Photos [and credits], from top: etc…'s Apocalypse! Book One; Jeremy Ellison-Gladstone and Monica Yudovich in Election Day [Mike Lyons]; Timothy Nolan's 2003 play Acts of Contrition [Jessica Ochs]; Sophia Skiles in The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc; Theater for the New City's outdoor production of Code Orange: On the M15; Judith Ivey in Dirty Tricks [Michal Daniel].