One reason people turn to religion, it is often thought, is for comfort in tough times. There’s certainly ample truth in that, as many who have lived through grief or recovery can attest. That’s not primarily why I personally attend church and maintain a connection to organized religion, despite—or perhaps because of—regular fluctuations in the status of my faith. The attraction for me is the chance to regularly contemplate, even be challenged by, the most fundamental questions we all face about the purpose and meaning of our lives. Who are we and why are we here? What do we owe each other? Whence does true value derive?
The last five years have confronted us daily with existential questions, both in our theatrical corner of the world and in the wider body politic. The social contract was badly frayed if not utterly destroyed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and by the contentious lockdowns—and equally contentious reopenings—that followed the virus’s initial waves of death and disruption. And the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd both built on a long tradition of struggle for racial justice and amplified its urgency.
In the theatre, these two epochal pivots had especially momentous impact. Lockdowns challenged the in-person essence of this ancient art form, while movements like We See You, White American Theater—whose progress we check on in this issue—put fresh pressure on nonprofit institutions to live up to their ostensible missions of service, access, and representation. Together they forced a painful but in many cases long overdue interrogation of the assumptions under-pinning our art form, how it’s made, and for whom.
Painful or not, it is healthy to never lose sight of these fundamental questions, and to frequently check our work against our values. But it can be exhausting, debilitating even, to be in a constant state of existential dread and uncertainty—as we have again been learning in the chaotic first few months of President Trump’s second administration. A kind of adrenal fatigue can set in when the very foundations of politics, culture, and the economy are constantly shaken, as they have been for what now seems like a decade. Indeed, fatigue might partly be the point; if we are tired, we cannot fight back.
In this issue, we not only check in on the industry’s progress on the demands of the We See You document, and on calls to rethink and reform board governance, but also on the field’s fiscal health, which remains dire, though one can find bright spots of promise. We’re also proudly publishing Lenelle Moïse’s beautiful, surprising play about relationships, familial and romantic and otherwise, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, and reporting on Someone Will Remember Us, an inspiring effort at Trinity Repertory Company, which reckoned with the long-tail effects of the Iraq War on U.S. service members as well as on Iraqis.
These last two examples remind us of a kind of reckoning that theatre is uniquely suited for. Much as church does for me, theatre offers a container for reflection, a ritual gathering of souls to witness and think and feel together. We have spent the last few years examining how that container is constructed, how it can be made more equitably, and whether it can survive at all. And we are likely entering a period in which we will be called upon to fight for the art form’s very existence, and to defend anew the values of diversity and inclusion, not to mention the human beings whom those values uphold.
But as we continue the essential work of rebuilding and soul-searching about how the work gets made, let’s not forget the crucial, irreplaceable soul work that brings us all into these buildings in the first place.
Rob Weinert-Kendt is the editor-in-chief of American Theatre.
