TOWARDS A RAPID-RESPONSE THEATER
November 10th, 2016, was a dark day in New York City. Globally, certainly, as well, but the sense of shame that could be sensed in the city on that day felt different from the fear and despair that pervaded elsewhere, nationally and internationally. For this man who is now president was a wholly New York City product. Those of us raised here, or at least those who have now lived in this city long enough to have wiped out the sense of ever having lived elsewhere (I propose this requires a 10-year minimum permanent residency, but that's an argument for in person after a couple pitchers of beer), while Trump himself is a fixture of the city, Trump is not and was never unique. The only thing he was, uniquely, was the absolute perfection of a quintessential NYC breed, the real estate developer. These people and their pocket politicians have been destroying New York communities for decades, manipulating all public services and the publicly funded state-oppressive arms (NYPD), all purportedly democratic processes, for their own capitalist ends since before many of us in today's left were born. Of course this media-addicted, coke-brain addled, unearned wealth-grabbing disease of a man was raised aloft in New York City, a place only very, very recently surpassed by San Francisco in its essential disparity as a capitalist haven and her toiling multiracial masses.
Within that shame, though, an alternate particularly New York sense swirled among the terror and dread: solidarity. Many of us packed in with brothers and sisters and nongendered sibs on overcrowded, underfunded trains taking us to work in neighborhoods far from our homes, would try to disguise our tears, until making eye contact with another tearful human and share an enormous wash of relief, as our bodies and hearts said to each other, "Fuck. Right? FUCK." New York, old union town and contemporary city of unbelievable income inequality, where races and cultures and bodies of all forms live literally overlapping each other, has always been a place where solidarity is in the bones and blood of its natives. And in no city has there been such an overt attack on the sinews of solidarity--communities, both geographical and social--as in New York, most despicably by the real estate developer class that gave rise to 45.
I write of this context because on November 10th, the emails, the social media accounts, the invites, the text messages, organized themselves around a single question: "What do we do now?" The question is obvious. But the answers distributed by each of these items were dramatically (forgive the pun) different. From the theaters, the depths of confusion was profound--"What now?" grounded in "How on earth did we get here, this is not the America I believed in." Therefore the answers were nebulous, at best. "What now" was answered with, "Now we put on a benefit reading of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress to donate proceeds to Planned Parenthood." Or, the even more liberal-politick "Now please charitably donate to this theater because now theater matters more than ever."
From my left communities, though, the answers were direct, immediate, imperative. Rather than confusion and existential conundrum, leftists were poised for this moment, because resistance to the world order is built into every one of our daily actions. This moment is a crisis, assuredly, but crisis as escalation of the daily, monotonous evils we've been combating for our entire political lives. Networks of sanctuary had long been established, as 8 years of Obama's deportation policies had put immigration activists on high alert. These networks could be mobilized immediately in the moment of crisis. Strike solidarity groups throughout the city could turn out masses of diverse people in response to the crisis of capital, of what assuredly would be an assault on organized labor, on undocumented workers' rights, on basic labor laws hard won--because these organizers have been fighting these fights for a century, passing the torch along. Even within arts communities, certain mediums seemed positioned to hit the ground running for resistance: poets scribed words of hope and despair each, voicing the dark pit in each of our hearts with the eloquence of poets who speak of oppression routinely. Visual artists could deliver graphics to be used for protest signs, because visual art has long been fundamental in capitalist propaganda and its weaponization recognized powerfully as such in leftist circles. Even the world of prose-writing, bourgeois and insulated as it has become, could at least use the democratic internet-publishing platforms to pour out narratives of political necessity.
So why has the theater so floundered to respond? The few acts of resistance organized by the community at large amount to little more than sessions of postcard writing to elected officials--the unradical, "civilized" method of response, by a disintegrated populace which knows no other form of politics than that of America's electoral legislative system.
THE THEATER MUST BE BETTER. The theater is, or should be, at all times a site of organized resistance. Only when theater is at all times created with a conscious conception of audience body politic will it be prepared to respond to specific administrations, legislative or jurisprudential policies--in short, to the effects of the governing powers.
It is not enough to write plays and musicals about a specific politician or even about America's electoral processes. Arguably in fact this version of a dramatic response is the least effective form of resistance, as, with very few exceptions, these artworks rely on a presupposition of America's political establishment as something fundamentally correct. These dramas portray men (and occasionally women) in power as Lears or as Lomans, and the system over which they preside as succeeding or floundering according to the party or personal positions of these men. Call this the Great Men of History approach to examining America's structural mechanisms. Which is to say, call this the approach that doesn't actually examine America's structural mechanisms at all, but begins with an adherent to the Founders' and Framers' sense of America as an idealistic experiment in democratic rule. Call this the "never mind that America has never, ever been a functioning true democracy," approach, the "if only Good Men (and sometimes Women) are in office we'll be fine" approach.
Siblings, I say to thee, RESIST THIS complacent dramatic structure above all else, daily, hourly, minutely. Speak truth to power at all moments; ground your art in that goal and see how the empty space flourishes; how "show families" become lifelong comrades become organized networks of support, safety, and power when the time of action towards outward hierarchies is nigh. And to find the words with which to speak that truth, consider yourself above all a citizen of your community, your city, your state, your country, your planet. Source your news and your media independently. Fling yourselves into the community work being done. Show up to meetings. Tap into the long tradition of social justice organizing in New York City. March the picket lines at least once a month. If you are in a position to do so, use your body to shield bodies in danger on trains, on streets.
Learn, in other words, how your every action is political, and it's up to you as citizen to decide whether you reinforce oppressive systems or join the fight to dismantle them.