Does theater matter? Some sobering answers from the internet

The weekend approaches, and your theater plans are in likelihood already made. But wait.  Perhaps you’ve even now broken your heart trying to come by into the ridiculously long list of astounding plays in fancy productions (The Motherf**ker with the Hat, Good People, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to…, Jerusalem, The Normal Heart, School because of Lies, etc.), and so you’d like to take a step back to contrive about the wider ramifications of theater in the nature. (Getting iced out of a dwelling always offers opportunity for reflection.) Suddenly, you wonder: Does theater make an impact? Are we wholly just obsessed with entertainment that finally lives and dies in its confess little bubble? Is there a passage between our values and the the stage?

Nothing makes me go into a agony-spiral about these issues like the Tony Awards behave, so this week has been distinctly fraught. In Jason Zinoman’s perceptive article on Slate, he makes the process that two of the above plays (Motherf***er and Good People) pencil a portrait of our contemporary participation so necessary, so incisive and apt, that they actually make Broadway (and the Tonys) fit again. Hallelujah, Jason Zinoman. Of hunt, lest we forget, this was a week in which the CUNY folk tried to bestow Tony Kushner an honorary degree, tabled it for the cause that a non-academic board member objected to Kushner’s political economy and then backpedalled like a neglectful newsboy—and during the press mishegas, individual board member said “I have no idea who Mr. Kushner is.” Zinoman points through that Kushner’s current play isn’t in like manner eligible for a Tony, but quiet, Kushner must be our most illustrious living American playwright, and he’s won sufficiency little gold statues in his gone by. So even if, as Zinoman says, the Tonys are relevant again, nothing—but nothing—can form some people pay attention. And up~ the body that heartening note: Have a unblemished weekend everybody!