On November 9, the day after, everything appeared bleak: the faces on the subway, the rainy sky. The chatter you hear in New York was suddenly muted. But I could also get on the A train in Washington Heights and know that my fellow passengers had probably voted for Hillary Clinton and were totally miserable with the results.
2 comments:
The thing that struck me the most was the very last sentence of the article, the advice from Ken Urban. He said "I resist the idea that theatre is supposed to teach anyone anything. It puts you through an experience and it makes you empathize with people who are quite radically different than you are." This is what I see in theater, what I think it's good for in times when we have to work past just entertainment, but I think this in and of itself is teaching. It's teaching people to listen, teaching people to think about the other side of the story perhaps more than they might typically. It's teaching people that all people are people. I understand, I think, what he means by not supposed to teach anything. If a play or a exhibit or any art form sets out to teach about one particular viewpoint or one side of one issue in efforts to explain what the artist might believe to be the ignore and under appreciated point of view, it can cause more problems that it might mean to. It can aggravate those who don't entirely agree because they don't see their views being represented or respected and when they feel hurt they get defensive and stop listening. Things are only going to get better when we all stop feeling so attacked and start listening to each other.
I think this article shares a lot of what many people have been thinking. I wonder how many people realized the date was 11/9 – the coincidence is somewhat fitting. I think Claudia Orenstein’s first quote in the article is the most fitting in my opinion. The government suddenly became hyper-relevant in everyone’s lives while before it was more seen as somewhat of an annoying gnat behind your ear, but not a pressing issue in the front of everyone’s mind – almost regardless of age. I think her quote also show the effect the election has had on the theatrical industry – which is also supported by all of the other quotes – that everyone suddenly has so many ideas of what theater to produce. The major thing about all of these new works is that they are very politically aware and politically driven. The up-side to all of the negative effects the current administration has conducted is that there is no shortage of politically driven topics.
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