On Being a So-Called Political Playwright

HowlRound: Proposed. The McCarthy era maintains a lethal, if invisible, grip on the American theater. The bugaboo may no longer be Communism, but there are plenty of ideas forbidden, still. To be a political playwright in the United States is to be censored—financially. It would be better, I sometimes think, to be thrown in prison, at least then someone might notice. PEN might come to one’s defense. (I have been in prison for antiwar actions, only for a day or two, strip searched, hand-cuffed for eight or more hours; I am not taking prison lightly). Financial censorship, like the blacklist of old, is the slow suffocation method—neither you nor your work is allowable, allowed. Just as torture under democratic governments has been engineered not to leave marks, so censorship, because economic, remains invisible.*