Dear Houston theater companies: New season could capture a moment — or fail. It’s up to you.
Climate is ripe for exploration, but trap of lazy political art is to be avoided
Hey, Houston theater scene, I got your memo.
You said, “We’re all going through something right now. Let’s talk about it.” You said that not with those words but through the titles you’re putting on this year and the next:
“Fake News” (staged by the 4th Wall Theatre Company) “1984” (Obsidian Theater) “The Government Inspector” (Classical Theatre Company)
“Enemies” (Main Street Theater)
“An Enemy of the People” (Classical Theatre Company) And so on. The message couldn’t be more obvious. These stories are all about the undermining of an enlightened society: the triumph of emotion over reason, propaganda over truth and the politics of self-interest over justice. You are, like everyone else, still reeling over what gets flashed on the news on a daily basis — shootings, protests, disorder, offensive behavior and a general sense of division and outrage. And you are openly, publicly trying to figure out what to do about it.
Theaters everywhere are diving into the broader cultural conversation in ways that could extend the medium’s reach beyond having a really popular musical named “Hamilton.”
In New York, the Public Theater’s production of “Julius Caesar” drew complaints over its depiction of a leader resembling Donald Trump getting assassinated. The theater lost major sponsors over the controversy, but it also sparked a kind of passion that non-theatergoers don’t usually have for the stage. The cycle of outrage might have been partisan, and the pulling of funds might have stirred already simmering anxieties about suppression, but the fact is there is now a meaty national debate about the intricacies and suggestions of a Shakespeare play. That’s worth celebrating.
This tension between provocation and appropriateness hasn’t quite played out in Houston this year. That’s not to say the political debate writ large hasn’t already begun through season announcements.
Look, a theater company that does only plays written over 100 years ago suddenly has a season that could feel thrillingly modern. The Classical Theatre Company’s season is wryly subversive in choosing “An Enemy of the People,” a play whose title was recently in the mouth of President Donald Trump and whose content speaks to the way governmental and financial interest can literally poison a society.
The company follows it with “The Government Inspector,” a story about an absurdly incompetent and immoral government whose outrage was originally directed against Russian rule.
Russia, by the way, is all over Houston theater in 2017-18. Main Street Theater’s “Enemies” is by Maxim Gorky, the subversive writer who was arrested and exiled multiple times in his life for criticizing Russia’s Tsarist and Stalinist regimes.
The Alley Theatre rushed Rajiv Joseph’s “Describe the Night” to the front of its upcoming season. The play features a Vladimir Putin-esque character who uses violence and propaganda to suppress the truth. Russia even hangs in the shadow of stories such as Main Street Theater’s “Daisy,” about the infamous political ad stoking nuclear war anxiety during the Cold War.
I get what you’re saying, Houston theater scene. You are saying that you are paying attention to how people are reacting to a political climate that feels more frustrating, unstable and divided than it has for a very long time. You are saying you want to participate in that conversation, but in a way that’s subtle enough so as not to risk the appearance of partisanship.
But I ask that you resist the temptation to simply stage an old piece of literature, say it’s “more relevant now than ever before” and stop the work there. Because that would make the entire idea of relevance no more than a knowing wink and nudge to the audience, just more spin and salesmanship.
Because there is a lazy way to do political art. Lazy political art takes the superficial elements of current emotion and channels it into entertainment. Lazy posturing, meanwhile, means pointing to (or, in your case, staging) a classic work that has renewed resonance but never making a point about how that work has changed or remained the same over time.
So I ask that you avoid selfcongratulation, which may or may not include hosting those terrible Q-and-A sessions that everybody dreads. I ask that you criticize and critique not only the current world but the existing canon that supposedly speaks to it. Because who else will? Theater could be where we have this clichéd, yet vital, notion of a “national conversation.” If our media, technology and politics have failed to provide a healthy venue for debate, then art can be that last bastion of live group gathering and thinking.
Many of the stories in Houston theater’s upcoming season explore the opposite — the demolition of free speech, and thus art. That paranoia translates easily to the real world, where the National Endowment for the Arts’ fate is in the air and where doing “Julius Caesar” suggests an act of controversy.
Which is to say that theater once again feels as precious and messy and beautiful as it always should. That’s great. Your upcoming season could access, harness and make sense of our current moment in a way that revitalizes our relationship with our art and with our history. The season also could utterly fail. The distinction lies in the hands of the directors, actors, designers and audiences.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet said “the purpose of playing … was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature … and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” Cassius, in “Julius Caesar,” wondered, “How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown.”
Shakespeare’s characters knew what art can do and would do for the coming centuries. Cassius guessed, correctly, that the rise and fall of his ruler would once again ignite the political consciousness. So, Houston theater scene, if there is such a thing as an appropriate time to risk everything, it’s now.
Never has your work been so much in peril, nor felt so alive.