I have previously praised Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues” for bringing social activism to the stage. Little did I know that seeing a production take a stance against the patriarchy wasn’t going to be an isolated event. Recently, these kinds of plays have been taking the theater world by storm, grabbing the attention of audiences from coast to coast. While the classics are still maintaining their importance in show business, newer and more substantial plays are now making their mark on and off Broadway by advocating for what is right.
Let me set the scene for you. The backdrop is our polarized political climate, and the plot tells the story of people’s rights to equality falling at the wayside — and all of it seems to be swaying producers and directors toward putting on plays with a punch.
So here’s where this is all coming from: this summer I worked with the San Francisco branch of the Beverly Hills Playhouse, a small theater company functioning out of intimate locations. Their actors, siphoned both from their partner school and from open castings, represent countless different demographics and backgrounds, in turn attracting an equally diverse audience. When I joined their team this summer to help out with advertising, the company was in the middle of an extremely successful run of “Brilliant Lies,” a play about the messiness of sexual assault.
What made this play so special wasn’t just that it dealt with such an intense subject, but because in the tiny theater we used, no one could hide. You simply couldn’t hide from the emotion of the stage or from the honesty and futility of live performance. The play was real. It was a chaos of emotion and controversy from both the performers and the audience.
These modern plays with political agendas do a particularly excellent job in depicting a story from both sides. In “Brilliant Lies,” the issue at hand was sexual assault in the workplace. You sympathize with the the assailant employer because though he isn’t innocent, he is facing a lawsuit and losing his job, which will put his dependent family at risk of bankruptcy. You also sympathize with the victim, but because she is a party girl looking to move up in the company, you still question her credibility. Isn’t this always the story? A complicated situation where it’s hard to know who to trust? No wonder these predicaments make people so angry and frustrated.
So, what’s the importance of all this? Why can’t we just tell these stories, gain some awareness and get on with it? Well, you can probably imagine the effects these performances have on a live audience — it creates a much more real experience than one in print or on screen. Simply talking about sexual assault doesn’t provoke much of an emotional response, but a play makes these issues much more digestible because you’re there with the characters throughout the whole story. You really get to know them, so when a problem like sexual assault arises, you’re more attached. Now that you’ve seen the story from both sides, it becomes much more uncomfortable of a dispute. Thus, you’ve been exposed to the too common narrative that is sexual assault, and in a way that’s deeply and emotionally compelling.
Taking it a step further, plays have the power to make you question things that aren’t even mentioned in the dialogue. In “Brilliant Lies” specifically, I wasn’t mad at the crooked attacker, nor was I mad at the victim for potentially fabricating parts of her experience. Instead, I found myself questioning the entire structure of our world and getting riled up over how sexual assault slips through the cracks in our world, contributing to so many more inequalities and injustices. Doesn’t that get to you?
Trust me when I say that if you saw all the action play out on stage, and were made to feel like you personally knew the people involved, the issues the play addressed would enrage you much more than it does just reading what some girl has to say about it in the newspaper.
