Democracy for Theatre—or Against?

49.8 percent of American voters have re-launched President Trump’s version of political theatre—protagonists with resentments and goals for retribution, inciting incidents that trigger conflicts with antagonists, suspenseful interactions, unexpected twists, and whatever crises and climaxes occur for the next four years.

If we can extract ourselves from the political drama on the news, what will we find in our real brick and mortar or online theatres? Escapes into song, dance, romance, and mysteries? A well-established elite audience retreating to classics? A flood of new political plays and some 1930s revivals? Radical acts of dramatic interactions in the street?

Just before the 2024 election, Dr. Frank Hentschker, executive director of City University’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, hosted a Festival for Theatre and Democracy with a wide range of participants and plays reflecting the work of the festival’s curator Ashley Kelly Tata who creates “multi realities” in all forms of theatre, using many media.

Tata drew together a stellar group of theatremakers whose work at least tries to merge theatre and support for democracy. Panels of artistic directors, dramaturgs, playwrights, directors, designers, and actors explored core challenges: 

• Can the power of theatre help strengthen democracy… and who cares?
• Can a focus on democracy strengthen theatre’s value for people… but which people?
• Do rising production costs and ticket prices doom for-profit theatremakers to ride the wave into elitism with the oligarchs President Biden warned us against in his farewell address?
• Doesn’t mixing art and politics often lead to preachy plays?
• Who means what by the word “democracy” and its relationship to theatre? And what if theatremakers, investors/funders, and audiences have very different views of democracy and how it should impact theatre… if at all?

Why Link Democracy with Theatre?

Despite what some might think, the linking of democracy with theatre isn’t sudden. The connection between democracy and theatre stretches back to ancient days. The festival opened the exploration of democracy in today’s theatre by journeying back to early religious theatre. UC Berkeley professor Shannon Steen pointed out that social class issues helped drive the development of the ancient “Mystery Plays.” People acted out Bible stories for church members who could not read the Bible and could not understand their priest’s Latin.

After Steen set the stage in an online live presentation, onsite panelists discussed the implications of her perspective. Jeremy Goren, a performer, director, and creator of devised performance through the AnomalousCo and Wisteria Project, discussed theatre’s ability to build agency among individuals as part of a larger society, not just focus on individual psychology of characters.

Jess Applebaum, of CUNY Graduate Center and the Edge Effect Media Group, is a dramaturg whose practice is rooted in contemporary performance, social action, and the cultural and political context of theatre projects. She discussed theatrical performances as a social process that heightens individual audience members’ awareness of their agency as part of the larger community. 

And DN Bashir, a playwright, theatremaker, and assistant professor of Theater and Performance at Bard College, discussed the importance of listening to the audience during a performance, previewing the festival’s finale to come. 

By the end of this session, we understood why the definition of “theatre” can include many types of performance that draw in an audience as part of a community—military parades, the pomp and posturing of leaders in uniforms surrounded by their retinue, and the sense of belonging to community that fans get from theatrical dress and performance styles, like from Country Western bands.

How Can Theatre Heighten Audience Awareness of the Value of Democracy?

Festival curator Ashley Tata balanced discussion of ideas about democracy and theatre with performances that demonstrate the power of theatre. In the next hour, we became audience members in a reading of a riveting play that merges theatrical intensity for individual characters with a dramatization of lost freedom. In The Pit by Matei Visniec, translated by Vas Eli and directed by Ana Margineanu, actors Vas Eli, Owen Campbell, Perri Yaniv, Caroline Do, and Maria Muller plunged us into a terrifying underground pit below a street. People caged in the pit make futile attempts to get help from pedestrians above. Vas Eli introduced the play, saying “We want to avoid feeding politics to the audience.” The play demonstrated the power of theatre to draw us quickly into an oppressive situation so we feel it as reality and in that moment, as audience, we sharpened our awareness of the play’s vision: the social and political brutality of freedom lost to fascism. 

How Can Theatre be Democratic With Soaring Production Costs and Ticket Prices?

After we recovered and reassured ourselves we were not trapped in a pit, the next panel focused on the many ways economics can cramp productions, limit audiences, and sabotage attempts to incorporate the values of democracy into individual shows and theatrical production groups. Among the challenges discussed:

• If the values and principles of democracy include equal opportunity for individuals regardless of political opinions and economic class as well as religion, nationality, and gender, what happens when the cost of producing theatre results in high priced tickets that only high income elites can afford?
• What views of democracy are held by the sources of funding for those production costs—investors, donors, grantors, government agencies—and what value do they want as a return on their investment? A percent of profits, if any? Great public recognition, branding, and “good will” from their constituents for supporting theatre? Invitations to opening night parties with the actors?
• To what extent do grants from private foundations or government agencies that fund theatrical events/performances impact or restrict artistic decisions?

Panelists discussed some examples of ways that theatremakers try to incorporate at least some values of democracy, despite the economics, including Vas Eli discussing how he produced and acted in the play we had just seen, The Pit.

Then James Shapiro, author of The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War, reminded us about the 1930s Federal Theatre Project that brought theatre to millions of Americans who had never seen a play.

Beto O’Byrne, co-founder (with Meropi Peponides) of Radical Evolution, described his street theatre “crew” of writers, musicians, choreographers, performers, producers, and community organizers. He gave examples of how they not only write dramatic action but also organize political action to support progressive issues—e.g., dramatizing the negative impact of government budget cuts on children. The company, inspired by the New Delhi street theatre company Jana Natya Manch, deals with the economics of theatre with an intentional strategy that many of us use only by default and few have the level of commitment to embrace: everyone in the company has a day job with flexible hours!

Risks of Speaking Truth to Fascists and Revenge by Theatre

Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of the Free Theatre of Belarus, now in exile in the United Kingdom, discussed the courage of theatremakers when they speak up against unjust brutality under a dictatorship. She briefed us about a play she directed with co-founder Nicolai Khalezin, KS6: Small Forward, that happened to be playing at La Mama in New York City at the time of the festival. KS6: Small Forward is about and written by basketball star Katsiaryna (Katya) Snytsina who was banned from basketball when she spoke out against the Belarus government’s brutal violence against mostly elderly protesters against the dictatorship. Natalia pointed out the irony that Katya gave up her starring sports career to speak for the values of democracy, but now can take her story around the world, playing herself, on a stage that doubles as a basketball court, including actual shots and contests with the audience.

Using Theatrical Activities to Bond Community

Next up, Aaron Landman, the playwright who wrote The City We Make Together, walked us through his Perfect City Toolkit. It offers performances, mapping exercises about belonging and avoidance, round table discussions, writing projects, and research on street challenges like harassment and gentrification. His group draws marginalized people on New York City’s Lower East Side to the Abrons Arts Center where his projects build civic engagement to break through urban isolation. He then conducted an activity by asking each of us in the audience to choose some person or place we avoid, then map our routes through the city to stay away. He demonstrated how his group uses visual storytelling activities to heighten awareness of ways we close doors and build walls to avoid conflict or danger, and to explore better options for building community.

JoAnne Akalaitis, powerful director of many avant garde plays arrived with actors Alfredo Narcisco, Elizabeth Marvel, Randy Danson, Orlando Portaboy, and Anamari (Ani) Mesa. Akalaitis discussed the wounding of the male psyche and the impact on democracy before a reading of Maria Irene Fornes’s The Conduct of Life.

The actors plunged us into New York City’s subway as they became the trains and sounds, straphangers inside, and police criminalizing the poor. They left us with a visual image of protests of the future and a call to action for justice.

How Can Street Theatre Support and Promote Demands for Justice?

Suddenly the entire Street Theatre Crew from Radical Evolution—Ash Marinaccio, Liz Morgan, lisa nevada, Beto O’Bryne, Meropi Peponides, Opalanietet Pierce, Amorarey Sandoz, and Sonia Villani—arrived in force, performing their show, Machine: NYC. Proud to be “loud with zero subtlety,” with strong physicality, and broad humor, the actors plunged us into New York City’s subway as they became the trains and sounds, straphangers inside, and police criminalizing the poor. They left us with a visual image of protests of the future and a call to action for justice.

How Do We Get Honest Audience Feedback To Help Develop Theatre Pieces?

When artists develop a work of theatre, the process may be top down or collaborative, devised by the artistic team. Rarely, it’s a collaboration with audience members who are only brought in when the piece is ready for a reading, sometimes with detailed feedback, sometimes a perfunctory yay or nay. But the festival closed with a performance piece in which the audience was involved in the development of every moment of a solo piece.

What can be said out loud? By whom? How can we hear each other?

Earlier in the festival, DN Bashir had previewed some questions: “What can be said out loud? By whom? How can we hear each other?” Now towards the closing, she discussed these questions further as she introduced her new solo show, Looking at the Water or Democratic Listening, with cellist Leah Coloff. To develop and strengthen this new solo project, Bashir wanted to find ways to capture the feelings in an audience as we respond to text—what we really feel at any point in the piece, not just our words about the experience. She had found that just asking audience members what they thought often resulted in distorted feedback because of politeness, fear of offending, or just forgetting how they felt at any particular moment early in the piece after it ends. 

To explore ways to learn how well her piece taps into emotions with honest feedback and without language, Bashir gave each member of the audience napkins of different colors and asked us not just to listen to her reading her story but also to use the napkins to show how we were feeling throughout the reading by raising our hand with the napkin for the color representing our response at any moment: blue for positive feelings (when we feel joy, bliss, agreement, appreciation, etc.); red for negative feelings (boredom, discomfort, sadness, anxiety, anger, fear, etc.). The stronger the emotion, the more strongly we should wave the napkin: rapidly or even frantically to show the intensity, or slowly and calmly or drooping motionless—whatever shows the depth or lightness of our feelings throughout the piece.

With her back to the audience, but able to see us in a mirror, DN Bashir read her story, while Leah Coloff played background music, aligning the cello’s pacing, volume, and energy with the dominant napkin color we were waving in the air calmly or frantically. After the experience, DN Bashir interviewed audience members to learn what we learned and what she could use as she develops and strengthens her monologue. She plans to adjust future performances in response to our comments as well as what she learned from the cellist’s high or low intensity performance as she read her piece.

Festival Take-Aways

As Frank Hentschker and Ashley Tata led a discussion about this day-long festival packed with ideas from dynamic theatremakers, their questions guided us into considering our own work in theatre in relation to democracy, and to turn that interest into specific actions. For example, if we spot negative disconnects between theatre and democracy such as ticket prices that create a class divide, how can we discuss the issue with producers, individual artists, financing groups, audience members, or even elected leaders in the communities served by a particular theatre?

By the end of the day, I felt more committed to my work of revising one full length play about an early crisis in our democracy; writing a game-based play for eighth graders learning about democracy; and capturing into a set of three ten-minute plays some encounters I’ve had confronting racists and immigrant haters in real-life dramatic moments.

As I stepped out into the night, I wondered if Frank Henschker chose the date for the Festival for Theatre and Democracy for a reason more profound than just to meet the week before the 2024 presidential election. As I crossed Fifth Avenue to walk West towards my subway I was immediately surrounded by people of all ages, colors, and backgrounds, most literally howling around 34^th Street. People gleefully becoming our fears, our lusts, and creating theatre with masks, make-up, wigs, costumes, light, sounds, dance, and a bizarre mix of human and non-human personalities. Joyful expressions of fantasies most of us reject as just this side of criminal or unethical, like that guy with a mask, waving his hatchet at me. Or that we usually hide when in public, like that half naked dancer inviting me to wiggle with her right there on 34^th Street. I found myself plunged into hordes of witches, devils, ghosts, half-naked princesses, green-faced monsters, aggressive robots, sentient pumpkins, and humongous, leering bunnies. I had forgotten we were meeting on 31 October—All Hallow’s Eve, when it is totally sane to walk among insanely dramatic creatures on their way to howl 'round, begging for candies or rushing off to parties. Our day to become whatever we usually fear, repress, or secretly long to be. How perfect to land in the midst of Halloween’s theatre for the people at the end of Siegel Center’s Festival for Theatre and Democracy!