NPR political reporter Don Gonyea will appear at a public event in the WKAR studios tonight.
His visit has us thinking about the intersection of politics and the arts.
With that in mind, WKAR’s Scott Pohl takes us Inside The Arts to preview an event with a political focus, coming to the Williamston Theatre.
A few times a year, Williamston Theatre presents staged readings. Actors read a script in an informal setting. There are no costumes or sets other than a table or music stands. It’s often on a single night when the theatre isn’t busy with a full-blown production.
With an election approaching, co-founder and director Tony Caselli says the theatre will expand that to three consecutive nights next month. “Why not just do three different types of plays (on) the topic of politics, or policy, or how we treat each other?” asks Caselli. “All of these things are wrapped up in an election, right? And so, we decided to do three different readings of three plays that tackle that issue or those issues in very different ways, and read them for people and invite them to come join us.”
The first play in the lineup is the classic George Orwell title Animal Farm, adapted for the stage by Ian Wooldridge. Williamston Theatre staged a hit production of Orwell’s 1984 during a previous election season. Animal Farm is a satire about the division of power in a barnyard. In choosing it, Caselli cites the book’s famous line that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, adding “that idea of yes, of course, we’re all in this together; you’re going to do what I say though, right? As long as it serves me, we’re all equal, right? And, it’s survived because it’s such a great, strange, dark, disturbing and familiar story.”
Next will be a reading of a new play by Sharyn Rothstein called Bad Books. It’s the story of a mother who complains to a librarian about a book given to her teenaged son. For the librarian, that act was a simple response to a request for help. In their discussion, Caselli says both the mother and the librarian make understandable arguments, “and then stuff happens, and the mother calls down her Instagram followers, and unfortunately like you see today, all of a sudden mobthink takes over on both sides, and it becomes a play about what happens when we’re not listening to each other.”
A side note about Bad Books: Williamston Theatre will also do a staged reading of the play next weekend at the Hooked bookstore in Lansing as part of the upcoming Lansing Literary Festival. We’ll have more about that festival next week.
The third staged reading will feature The Election by Don Zolidis. In this comedy, a high school student body election is taken to extremes, and like what seems to happen in many elections, Caselli says the candidates begin to focus on things that aren’t importantant, such as the color suits people are wearing, or how much golf are they doing on their own private off time. “Half of the time,” he concludes, “it’s not even about policy or the actual impact that the world is going to feel from electing this person, and it can be the ridiculousness of the minutæ.”
Caselli is quick to point out that none of these three plays has a particular point of view. While political, they also can be an artistic break from the serious business of Election 2024, and he hopes they’ll get people talking no matter where they might fall on the political spectrum.
The Dark Nights In Billtown staged reading of Animal Farm will be on October 7th, followed by Bad Books on the 8th and The Election on October 9th at Williamston Theatre.
