ON ACTING: Political Drama

Drama which decides a plot issue too easily is political theater. Political theatre settles its questions for the audience, giving them one side of the issue fairly, the author’s side; it is ultimately boring. It is preaching to the choir. It offers ready made, simplistic answers to complex issues. It is children’s theater in the most pejorative sense: “Don’t think; just do as Mommy (in this case, the writer or prejudiced actor) says.”

Polemic art is dishonest art; it prejudges the outcome, fixes the game. Its purpose is not art, not even education; its purpose is politics and propaganda. It panders to the audience. And it justifies itself by declaring such subjective proselytizing dramatically inevitable.