Fringe Binge
New York's International Fringe Festival presented lots of political theater productions that blasted President Bush, but some of them missed.
by Liza Weisstuch
(September-07-2004)
WBUR Online Arts

President George W. Bush was at the New York International Fringe Festival during the last two weeks of August. No, not in person. His character, or rather caricature, made appearances (or was referred to in scripted dialogue) in several of the thirteen shows I saw in my seven-day fringe binge. (For the record, thirteen is a pittance at a festival that features 210 performances in twenty venues throughout downtown Manhattan.)
Did all the Bush talk suggest that political theater is alive and well in America? If the festival is any indication, there won't be much provocative rabble-rousing amid the name-calling: this year's festival lineup, from what I saw, was crammed with campy laugh-fests, ambitious but generally flimsy musicals, slacker-centered dramas, and comedies that unabashedly aspire to become the Next Cult Sensation.

Six shows directly dealt with current events and government figures. Shakespeare's said that theater should be held like "a mirror up to nature." Unfortunately, the makers of political theater at the NY Fringe Festival didn't mirror how the world is, but concentrate on how the world appears refracted through other forms of media, like newspapers, magazines, even satirical TV programs. Few of the shows drove deep into the core of slippery issues and entrenched ideologies. A lot of enduring theater has a political punch, because it examines human psychology in a political context, not media-fixated cartoons.

What's the longevity of a musical that deals directly with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and its aftershocks, especially when they're cutesied up? The latter entertainments included "John Walker Lindt the Musical" (instrumental accompaniment provided by the on-stage "Taliband"). Or take "The Passion of George W. Bush," which featured comic embellishments, like Condoleezza getting visibly aroused at the mention of Congress and Dick Cheney ominously crooning "You Will Be My Vessel" to a guppy-ish Dubya. These satires offer sugar rushes, not nourishing sustenance. Instead of examining political matters as a way that prods audiences to consider human behavior and perhaps, in turn, examine their own views, these works belittle the critical issues of our time with the flippancy of sketch comedy.

Fringe NYC was founded eight years ago by The Present Company, which has produced it every year since. According to Elena Holy, the festival's producing artistic director, adjudicators choose from over 800 submissions, seeking to create a lineup based on "innovation, vibrancy and diversity." The biggest hit to emerge in recent memory from the festival was the triple Tony-winner "Urinetown." Yes, that musical was political, but it was an admittedly goofy meditation on free will and wastefulness. It was provocative by being inferential, not rub-your-nose-in-it referential.

Holy said the festival has always featured works of a political bend, or what she calls "socially conscious" plays. Producing expenses are manageable by even small companies, so the fringe is a forum where a variety of independent artists can be heard. "We look for diversity – cultural, geographic, and in genre," she explains. "We also look for diversity in voices represented, people telling stories of different experiences…. Because of the opportunity we present, we have a goal to subtly influence our culture." Alas, the socially conscious plays I sat through were hardly subtle.

The problem with contemporary political theater in the era of Bush is that it takes the form of clunky satire that transmits specific messages. This is a one-two knockout punch: the shows date quickly and are dogmatic to boot. There is not an inkling of alternate perspectives, a whiff of genuine dissent. Hasn't that historically been an overtly political artist's role in society? To instigate?

One play effectively evoked contemporary quandaries without thwacking me on the skull with blaring citations: Chicago's WNEP Theater's "Let There Be Light," an adaptation of a long-banned John Huston documentary about World War II soldiers being treated for battle fatigue. Witnessing uncensored examinations of how these men suffered may make even staunch war-mongers consider the circumstances leading to those soldiers' agony, and to think about the anguish of today's soldiers coming back from Iraq.

Don Hall, WNEP's executive director, explained why satire doesn't work for his purposes. "If you go back to intelligent satire – take Swift's "A Modest Proposal" -- he does it very subtly and realistically," Hall insists. "It sounds and reads like he's proposing what he's proposing. It's not all ‘wink, wink.' Today most of what's interpreted as satire is overly broad, ‘wink-wink,' aren't-we-smart, aren't-they-stupid. I think it fails if it presents itself as a joke and that it is still smarter than everything else."

Hall says he subscribes to a "Dada Concept," meaning it's not the artists' job to dictate what we're supposed to think. We all apply our own context and experience to a work of art. "What I insist on and want most is that those hawks look objectively at the consequences of war. ‘Let There Be Light' may lean Left, but war is hell, it's a bad thing. That doesn't mean it's not necessary, but if the idea is we're going go to war in Iraq, [leaders] have to be upfront about it. Yes, we'll kill thousands of innocent civilians, yes, soldiers are going to die. [Leaders] have to acknowledge that this is going to happen, but that they believe that in spite of all these negative effects, it's necessary."
All these relevant considerations from a play that is set right after WW II. There's a lesson in that for those who are making political theater.

Visit the official website of the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival.
Liza Weisstuch writes commentary for WBUR Online Arts, the online arts magazine of WBUR, Boston's NPR news station.
© Copyright 2004, WBUR