What Role Can Art Play in Politics?

The Theatre Times: Suddenly there is this persistent call for an art that is useful, for direct commitment, for artistic activism, for intervention in the political reality of our society and economy. And it is good so.

Of course it is a provocation: after hundreds of years of fighting for the autonomy of art, after decades of learning that the essential quality of art is ambiguity, after years of repeating that art poses rather than answers questions, there is suddenly this persistent call for an art that is useful, for direct commitment, for artistic activism, for intervention in the political reality of our society and economy.