Tynan's Anger

You know when even The Daily Show is making fun of critics declaring the death of American political theater, the epidemic is getting out of hand. The last greatly exaggerated report of political theater's demise comes from John Longenbaugh of the Seattle Weekly, who sees the premiere of two plays from the Uzkbek (or as Borat calls it, asshole) playwright Mark Weil as an excuse for a diatribe on America's lack of political theater. He makes sure to convince people that America has no political theater by presenting ACT's director Kurt Beattle's assurance that the Uzbek plays make "no calls for workers to throw off their chains, or even the sort of superbly detailed study of politics the company gave us last season with David Hare's Stuff Happens." In other news, Longenbaugh is teaching a class in rhetoric at the University of Washington.

The most ridiculous part of the argument is the claim that "Even in its heyday in the 1930s, when playwrights like Elmer Rice, Lillian Hellman, and Clifford Odets dominated the stage, plays focused more on social criticism than full-throated cries for social change." I guess this means the cast of the Group Theatre was not yelling "STRIKE! STRIKE STRIKE!" loud enough for Longenbaugh's taste at the premiere of Waiting for Lefty. Maybe this post-Katrina take at the Cripple Creek Theatre Co. in New Orleans is full-throated enough. I also guess this means that full-throated cries for social change are more important than, y'know, actually having human characters and a coherent plot. All these years my priorities have been way off.

Seriously, though, America's lack of political theater has served the same role in the theater press that the steroids debate has in the sports press: it's an enormous, glaring concern for the press, but few other people actually care. It's a completely artificial concern, and people come up with the most ridiculous methods of criticizing it. I hate the Bush administration as much as anyone, but I have better outlets for that concern than in articles about the course of American drama. As much as I love Brecht, I'd rather just let theater be theater.

Labels: act theater, clifford odets, cripple creek theatre co., john longenbaugh, seattle weekly, the death of american political theater, waiting for lefty