Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 107

Playwrights and theater makers in the modern era also have been punished
for upsetting audiences by reminding them of painful truth. Athol Fugard
was persecuted by South Africa’s government for portraying the human
cost of apartheid on the stage. While Fugard, a white South African, was
fined and his passport confiscated, his black actors John Kani and Winston
Ntshona, were frequently jailed. But this persecution only increased the
empathy for South Africa’s majority black population the actors generated
wherever they toured. The emotional connections they sparked performing
in Fugard’s plays around the world played no small role in galvanizing the
global antiapartheid movement. The apartheid government profoundly
miscalculated the impact of Fugard’s heart-wrenching plays when they
granted visas for travel to Fugard and his actors. Perhaps, they thought, how
much harm can a play do? They should have consulted Herodotus.
More recently, the current political climate in the US of division and
intolerance has resonated in response to theater. Oskar Eustis’s production
of Julius Caesar at New York’s Public Theater, in which the protagonist
resembled Donald Trump, has provoked an outcry from the right. Ironically,
the critics, including the President’s own son, ignored Shakespeare’s main
point (QR Code �): violence is never a solution to political discord. Instead,
reflecting a political environment in the US in which neither side listens to
the other, the defenders of Donald Trump were quick to accuse the “left”—
in this case the Public Theater—of appearing “to depict President Trump
being brutally stabbed to death by women and minorities” (QR Code �). On
opening night, artistic director Oskar Eustis took the stage to explain how
the focus on violence missed the central message of the play (QR Code �).
“This play, on the contrary, warns what happens when you try to
preserve democracy through non-democratic means. But at the
same time, one of the dangers unleashed is a large crowd of people
manipulated by their emotions, taken over by leaders that urge them
to do things not only against their interests, but that destroy the very
institutions there to serve and protect them.”
Despite the controversy, there was nothing unusual in the Public Theater
production. Portraying Julius Caesar in the guise of a contemporary political
leader is the norm (QR Code �). In a production � years ago at the Guthrie
theater in Minneapolis, a black Julius Caesar, referencing Barack Obama, was
assassinated. While two corporate sponsors of the Public Theater—Delta
airlines and the Bank of America—withdrew their support in reaction to the
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