American Theatre: Don’t Believe in Yesterday, Learn From It
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Fall Season Preview: Remembering the Past to Face the Future
I can still recall the first few times my kids started to begin sentences with the phrase, “Remember when…?” It began as early as age 5 or 6.It was bittersweet and bracing to realize that these newish creatures had entered the stream of time alongside the rest of us, with much water ahead but also a wake forming behind.
What kind of world are they, and we, heading into? And can past lessons give us tools to face what’s coming for us? As we survey a national landscape riven with the kind of division and fear that opportunistic authoritarians are all too eager to exploit, we might do well to remember that their terrors and tactics are not new. neither are the strategies that artists and activists have used for generations to repel the forces of darkness and ignorance-indeed,their fearless imaginations have frequently enough created the light that leads us out of cocoons of isolation,not to mention prison cells.
This Fall Season Preview issue of American Theatre is focused on what we can take from the struggles of the past to equip us for the struggles of a present which demands our active vigilance and resistance. Dezi Tibbs’s cover story celebrates the intergenerational path of trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming performers thru an industry that has only recently begun to acknowledge the full range of their expression and artistry.Gabriela Furtado Coutinho’s remarkable narrative nonfiction piece imagines its way into three historic examples of artists using their craft to resist and transcend oppression.Ashley Lee’s in-depth account of East West Players’ revival of Yankee Dawg You Die at East West Players can’t help but illuminate how far Asian American depiction has-and hasn’t-come since Philip Kan Gotanda first wrote it in 1988. And Nathan Pugh’s first-person account of his resignation from the Kennedy center sounds a timely alarm about the dangers facing legacy arts institutions in the Trump 2.0 era.
This issue’s Top 10 Most Produced Plays and Top 20 Most Produced Playwrights offer a snapshot of the theatrical landscape, revealing trends and highlighting the voices shaping contemporary american theatre.