Wednesday, July 22, 2026
The Moralists at the Stage Door
THEATRE & THE ART OF LIFE: Theatre today remains a frequent target of moralists—people who are quick to tell others how they should behave. At Out Front Theatre in Atlanta, for example, Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told—a comic, queer retelling of Genesis—was denounced in a petition bearing 40,000 signatures. On Broadway, meanwhile, the suffragist musical Suffs was interrupted mid-performance by protesters demanding that it be shut down for the alleged crime of recycling “white feminism.” Different pulpits, same sermon: Art, behave.
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I think that this article strikes the heart of the issue of portrayal vs endorsement. I think that in large part this issue stems from conflating the idea of a protagonist and a hero or even a fundamental misunderstanding of the hero's journey. In many classic dramas and tragedies the audience is not supposed to agree with the protagonist. After all, as the article points out, if the protagonist was perfect there would be no story. I doubt that anyone would take away from The Odyssey that being boastful and over confident are desirable traits. A protagonist suffering due to their flaws provokes more reflection than if the antagonist suffers from their flaws. Even in cases where you are not expected to root for the protagonist, they are the character driving the story forward. Protagonists will inevitably make mistakes. The point of theatre is to learn from those mistakes. A play full of perfect characters that always take the most optimal and moral path would be exceedingly short.
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