To resist or not to resist, that is the question.
Sara Rubin here, hoping that William Shakespeare will forgive me. I’m invoking his famous Hamlet soliloquy line because I hope that by now, halfway through President Donald Trump’s perpetual attacks on American institutions and liberties, we agree that obviously we should resist. The real question is: How much fun can people have doing it?
Leave it to theater people to answer: A lot.
Hope Tinney, the community engagement coordinator at The Western Stage at Hartnell College in Salinas, is inviting anyone interested in theater performance in defense of democracy to join a workshop at 3pm this Sunday, Oct. 4 in the Studio Theater of Hartnell’s performing arts center. Expect to learn more about how to produce one of three suggested one-act plays, about a half-hour in length, released by the Writers for Democratic Action as part of its Democracy Theater Project.
“At The Western Stage, we firmly believe that everybody is capable of powerful storytelling,” Tinney says.
The baseline: You need no acting experience, no costumes, no memorization—just enough chutzpah to be part of an act of resistance that can also be an act of entertainment. (There is logic behind these guidelines beyond making it accessible. The guidance not to wear a Donald Trump costume has intent. “Impersonations can make him seem funny and harmless,” Tinney notes. “He is not funny and harmless.”)
The project is part of a long American tradition. A year after Sinclair Lewis published the satirical novel It Can’t Happen Here in 1935, in late October, just before the presidential election, at least 21 different groups staged performances of a theatrical adaption.
Tinney is planning a production in her backyard. “We will be preaching to the choir but there is a certain energy: This is going to be fun,” she says. “There is comfort in finding a group of people you can celebrate the resistance with.”
She’s already been doing that, attending protests in Monterey and Salinas—and taking her alto saxophone out of the closet and playing with her niece and brother (also on sax). They call themselves The Rabbles or The Butterfly Brigade, and some “actual musicians” have since joined in. Their own musical skill, she says, is irrelevant. “The point is to make music together and feel like we are contributing in some way.” The same applies for the plays: “It feels like you are creating something, which takes you one step further than standing on the street holding signs.”
The free scripts are for It Can’t Happen Here—Again!, Paul Revere Resists and Ban the Bans. You need not attend the Sunday session to stage one, but especially if you’re new to performance, it can help. Tinney recommends two or three read-throughs and then—you’re ready to go.
Donald Trump is using America as a stage to project his own high-drama unraveling of American institutions and norms. We might as well turn our own yards and living rooms into stages between now and Election Day.