Does theater matter? Some sobering answers from the internet

The weekend approaches, and your theater plans are to all appearance already made. But wait.  Perhaps you’ve already broken your heart trying to be~ into the ridiculously long list of marvellous plays in fancy productions (The Motherf**ker by the Hat, Good People, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to…, Jerusalem, The Normal Heart, School according to Lies, etc.), and so you’d like to take a step back to mean about the wider ramifications of theater in the earth. (Getting iced out of a residence always offers opportunity for reflection.) Suddenly, you surprise: Does theater make an impact? Are we quite just obsessed with entertainment that in the end lives and dies in its hold little bubble? Is there a commerce between our values and the boards?

Nothing makes me go into a pain-spiral about these issues like the Tony Awards be enough, so this week has been individually fraught. In Jason Zinoman’s perceptive article on Slate, he makes the inflection that two of the above plays (Motherf***er and Good People) paint a portrait of our contemporary club so necessary, so incisive and astute, that they actually make Broadway (and the Tonys) applicable again. Hallelujah, Jason Zinoman. Of order, lest we forget, this was a week in what one. 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 negligent newsboy—and during the press mishegas, person board member said “I have none idea who Mr. Kushner is.” Zinoman points to the end that Kushner’s current play isn’t plane eligible for a Tony, but di~ery, Kushner must be our most far-famed living American playwright, and he’s won fulness little gold statues in his beyond . So even if, as Zinoman says, the Tonys are relevant again, nothing—but nothing—can raise some people pay attention. And without ceasing that heartening note: Have a valuable weekend everybody!