Election Week at the Theater
Theater has always been political, but some productions engage with politics better than others.
When my friends and I were getting tickets to see New York City Center’s Encores! Revival of “Ragtime,” we decided that going pre-election was better. Who knew what it was going to be like on Wednesday, November 6th, 2024? Why would we choose to go see a show about racial violence, immigration, and early 20th-century America?
While this production of “Ragtime” was remarkable and moving when we did see it October 30th, when I went back on November 9th, unsurprisingly, it was moving in a jaded, despairing way. The show follows Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Black ragtime pianist who has a child with a woman named Sarah. Together they sing “Wheels of a Dream,” where they imagine everything they and their son will do as he grows up. The first time I saw it, it felt like overwhelming hope, excitement — maybe foolishly, the same thing I thought many of us in the theater were trying to feel before the election. When I saw it post-election, you could hear the sobs of people in the audience, the dark knowing of what may come. Their hope felt tragic, naive, false.
This isn’t a novel observation; theater has always been a reflection of the world we live in (we didn't, of course, fall out of a coconut tree then show up for a 7 p.m. show). It’s a two-way street. No piece exists in the vacuum of a stage and the physical place it’s performed in. Each audience member brings in their own biases, identity, emotions, history, and opinions, which is what makes art so subjective and yet so special.
So when theater does engage with the political, the best productions don’t blare history in our faces but rather take advantage of that subjectivity — the human element — and look deeper into the people living of that time, or this time. Take “Cabaret,” which puts characters in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. Yet instead of opening with the horrors of the Holocaust, we’re thrown into the liveliness of a cabaret, following the characters that perform and participate in it. We get the self-obsessed but lovable cabaret singer; a cautious American novelist; a love between a kind Jewish man and a tough landlady. When politics intersect with and threaten their lives, we understand how horribly large, tragic events affect the everyday person — how they affect everyday people like us.
It’s in those smaller, human moments of theater where we can best access the larger truths about politics. I’ll admit I was skeptical before seeing “Vladimir,” an off-Broadway play that ran at Manhattan Theater Club last month. How were they going to tackle talking about a dictator without being incredibly didactic? It turns out, by putting a microscope on a piece of life and never mentioning him by name. “Vladimir” follows Raya, a Russian journalist dedicated to covering the atrocities in Chechnya in 2004. We understand the politics of Russia not through hearing about policies, changes, and dangers, but by seeing the actual impacts they have on Raya’s life. Before her daughter’s wedding, her daughter asks Raya to stop covering the war, telling her that she wants to see Raya survive long enough to grow old. Trying to tell the truth about what was going on in Chechnya put Raya at risk of being killed by the government. A daughter wanted her mother alive.
“Vladimir” was so effective for me because it was a human way into the larger story. I don’t need a history lesson with poorly projected dates and maps. I want to learn it through the way a loved one worries for their partner’s safety; the way a parent dreams for their child’s future. These are the moments that theater gives us unique emotional access to, zooming in on the specific heartbreaks and triumphs, the dangers and hopes that open the door for larger conversations.
When theater instead focuses on giving us those history lessons, telling us how we should react and feel, it ends up hollow, disconnected. I saw a production of “The Laramie Project” in college, which tells the story of the 1988 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming. The play depicts interviews from people in the town and their reactions to his murder, using real quotes from their interviews. Yet we don’t get into the truth depth of any of these characters. We hear their reactions, how the event had an effect on their town. Instead, the show focuses on exploiting the details of the murder, smearing the tragedy in our faces (quite literally in the production I saw, with projections on the back wall). That’s not to say it’s not a tragedy worth telling, nor worth knowing about. Instead, if we’re using the theater as a medium to inform, we have to consider what’s more effective: shoving an atrocity in our faces to get a reaction, or telling a story with care and true emotional depth.
“Suffs,” a musical on Broadway about the suffragist movement, does this balance well, taking the more straightforward political route yet embellishing the cast of characters. While we’re getting a history lesson, the story is rooted in the relationships between these women, giving us deep characters and bonds. Their fights are framed in the emotional battles they face as well as the political ones; we learn their historical highlights while connecting to them as people. One of the most emotional moments shows the mother who wrote a note to her son in Congress, asking him to vote for the 19th amendment — but gives a glimpse of what kind of woman she is, their family, and how she drove to town in a downpour to send the telegram.
Shaina Taub posted to Instagram last week — after bravely performing in both “Suffs” and “Ragtime” right after the election — and said that theater is a place not for answers, but to ask questions. Remove the diatribe, remove the monologue that tells us how to feel about a moment in history. Instead, give us the space to gather, to learn something we didn’t know about, to hear a perspective we hadn’t listened to, to see from the eyes of an everyday person who went through history — because we are everyday people living through historical moments, too.
Thanks for reading Not to Be Dramatic. I’ve been on a bit of Substack writing hiatus, but not a theater-going hiatus, so lots to come soon! If you’re looking for something to see, many of these shows are still open or have just opened — next on my “to buy” list are “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Death Becomes Her.”
Happy theater-going!