Lauren Gunderson feels guilty. At least she did over ten years ago when she wrote THE REVOLUTIONISTS: A COMEDY, A QUARTET, A REVOLUTIONARY DREAM FUGUE, A TRUE STORY. Theatre's magic is its very ephemera and timelessness, but sometimes I'm shocked at how Atlanta theatremakers forget to read the room. Theatre has always been a luxury. Dessert. But with so many courses to choose from, and the appetite suppressants abound, all frosting and no cake takes its toll.
(Note: this type of dessert is what Gunderson's protagonist, thus Gunderson, also believes is the obstacle in her self-proclaimed "meta" play, THE REVOLUTIONISTS. All play and no work makes Jacqueline a dull playwright.)
Once upon a time, I was fired from a teaching job at an acting conservatory. Outcast and unfriended as the price for giving emotionally charged, unsolicited parenting advice. Ew. I know.
I had never been a tutor before (something my bosses were well aware of) nor had I proclaimed to do well in the subject of science. But I was a teacher, had the moxie of a diva, and my bosses seemed to be utilizing an efficient stone by asking a proven, extremely agreeable employee to help tutor their kid in biology. Perhaps they were stoning their guilt for being a parent who waited until a singular exam determined the fate of their child's pass/fail future, while also, putting a tutor's name on court documents for educational due diligence in an ongoing custody battle, plus, expanding their altruistic natures to me, an employee going through a messy divorce. One toss. 3 issues. Done.
Theatre people helping (and exploiting) theatre people, I mean, "hellooooo (Dolly)." The bosses graciously padded my paycheck by inviting me to do everything from cleaning their house to writing acknowledgment letters for the Board. I was so grateful, so new to town, so new to uncoupling and thinking for myself, these bosses became my guardian angels and, at the time, my only local friends. We all thought we were all supporting each other.
But this kid, their child and my student, needed real help passing a real test. Cue the musical montage when the scheme was set in place. We were beyond the benefits of learning, darling, he just needed to pass.
"All we need is for you to sit with him while he watches the videos and make sure he takes the tests." Cut to a failing grade in high school biology (and three undisclosed, diagnosed and medicated, learning disabilities later) I was blamed for their kid's disgrace (and, conveniently, a few others.) While shamelessly defending myself through tears and severe abandonment issues, I clapped back at my angels and dared to mention the spiritual by-pass of having hired me to tutor their kid in the first place while also selfishly blurting what I considered the true culprit of the inevitable: "Oh, and a lifetime of unlimited access to screens!" Yikes. I took their one stone, swallowed it, and tossed myself right through the glass house. I still have scars.
I should have never said yes to the gig to begin with, and had I listened to more ethical alarms going off, better boundaries would have prevailed. I think about their kid, my former student, often. At the time, he seemed happy and healthy and clueless to our failures. He may have even thought it was his fault he hadn't passed his class. He was doomed to from the beginning by the egos and desperation of the adults that were supposed to be in charge.
(Note: that last sentence is actually the thesis of this "meta" review. Sometimes playwrights think audiences are students. Sometimes reviewers take the assignment (bait?) and potentially, with great ignorance, dare punch up...)
Embracing shame and reframing our stories can keep failures from futility, but guilt is a powerful lens. Lauren Gunderson, our Nation's statistically most prolifically produced playwright and, also, identifying feminist afab, makes sense to add to a theatrical season. She is and has been an important voice and advocate for many. Game sees game and The Patriarchy is especially useful in the hierarchy of the collaborative arts. With philosophers, religious pageantry, and, duh, Shakespeare, theatre has always thrived (painfully and politically) on the whimsy of popularity and subscription, and any non-profit playing by the implicit rules would rightfully choose to add Gunderson to their season. Especially now, especially after yet another Arthur Miller. (Whom is beloved, still, yes, but maybe we can thank Him and The Bard in the credits for a while and listen to underserved stories that are, gasp, also Universal.)
THANK GODDESS FOR LAUREN GUNDERSON.
(Note: this is the useful "meta" quote to go under the five-stars in future marketing.)
As a fan, I have experienced her as a generous teacher, thoughtful voice, and frankly an expert at helping us laugh at ourselves through love and acceptance. Personally, I have always admired the epically modern, southern, woman playwright that is Lauren Gunderson.
However, as a typically-able-bodied, over-educated, passionate, privileged, white, beauty-standard-abiding, straight-passing, but queer-enough-for-benefits, mother-who-was-able-to-breastfeed, published playwright myself, I also, revel in political satire, reflective comedy, as well as the power of language and the theatre's capacity to respect and worship at the altar of the audacity of a spotlight in the world's most coveted, effective, and important commodity: INFLUENCE. BUT… I am exhausted from the moral, injurious heartbreak of this artform, my passion, and I'm also absolutely jealous. You see, Lauren Gunderson got to have a another Atlanta production, and with this one especially, Theatrical Outfit accidentally did the exact thing her play was afraid of doing: capitulate to the rich.
Punching up at your own face is the biggest privilege of them all. Kings and jokers. Celebrity roasts hosted by celebrities. You get it. This IS theatre.
(Note: this is also AI.)
As I watched Theatrical Outfit's always impeccably executed design standards—they not only clearly champion skilled crafting, but they also hire people who think about the ways costumes, sets, and music contribute to the telling of the story (including careful distance from triggers like staging historical executions.) Still, I couldn't help but feel myself squirm in my seat. Was Gunderson satirizing herself? Ug. If she is truly struggling with the calling to tell historical heroine stories, how is she making this happen if the spotlight is, firstly, on her?
The loudest laugh before intermission was a slave joke at the expense of a black character who assists the protagonist. There was also a serious, albeit "literally hilarious," infantilized queen. Silly girls and their menstruation, propensity to fall in love with handsome men, and dimwitted profundity. Ouch. Awkwardly timed dancing. Purposeful tearjerker singing. And rape jokes. Please let's laugh at the idiocy of violence, yes, but something was uncomfortably off about the timing of this play’s particular production. Did anyone in the audience remember the recent politics of Gunderson's public apology?
The actors produced some of the best ATL performances I have seen since I have had the opportunity to publish my opinions about them. Was it because they had to work so hard to make up for a play that was more of an initial draft in Gunderson's head than made for her visitors inside it?
I happened to run into a previous professor at intermission. She was gushing about the show. Wonderful. I love when normies think theatremakers matter. But even though she and I share extremely similar privileges of which I was aware, I don't think she was having the same experience I was having. This feminist professor teaches in a program steeped in Intersectional values, however, like Gunderson, and my beloved professor, I have been an angry white lady for a while, living with the uncanny privilege of perpetually discovering that which causes my rage. People in survival mode don't have time to feel. It’s another luxury. I am lucky.
But, no really, when do the mirrors we hold up to society become the ponds from which we drown? Yes, Gunderson, thank you, women should help women be heard, even in the discomfort of privilege, but exactly, no really, when do we stop complaining, entertaining, signaling, and do the work?
Why did Theatrical Outfit produce a political play not old enough to recycle relevancy and too new to uphold the exponential trajectory of the actual current theatrical revolution worthy of curtain-speech pleads for funding and the covetous nature of being "on the Board?" How many times do we complain about the inefficiency of possibility and pain of potential and actually NOT do what we say we believe in?
(Note: who am I to "meta" point this out?)
Contextually, in 2015, Gunderson's participation in the education of how modern theatre becomes a reflective political conversation was palpable, useful. But today, much like the "job" of opinion, with great irony, I don't think we need another one of these similar explanations from another charming someone who has such a high profile and lifestyle. We are well aware that history is a pattern. Recognition is obvious. Gunderson is an extremely clever storyteller, well known for her expertise and relevance of the skill and structure of playwriting as well as the slight-of-hand it takes to cut through all the noise necessary to keep phones away from the audiences. For nonprofit boards and playwrights in the ongoing attempt to be noticed by them, Gunderson is a master of theatrical ear worms.
Oh the privilege of even the slightest interest in your catalogue of work for audiences to discover! The pitch for the theatrical season is palpable: Gunderson is successful, local, female, political, and popular. Who wouldn't produce her work? Subscribers will feel so cool when they bop to the EDM playing between scenes. This playwright ticks the relevant boxes.
THE REVOLUTIONISTS is about the importance of Gunderson’s chosen vocation through a character that exposes the oppression of internalized female subservience, and frankly, dares us to murder her before she murders herself. Which Gunderson actually does to her lead. It's pretty genius. And also a bit of why I wanted to become a reviewer: specifically to support local productions. This stuff kills us. It's hard to make theatre. Too hard. But I am beyond love, I'm an addict, and I want to contribute to the subversion of this system of opinions, and yet, I, like Gunderson, want to be heard for them. I want a thumbs up too.
They say the weaponization of self-help becomes abuse at a certain point. Using enemy strategies to fight the enemy makes you the enemy. Self gaslighting is real. What do we do with all of this hypocrisy?
(Note: that question is the algorithm of the collective point of modern theatre. I don’t think theatre is about much more than that question, really.)
America's most precious (and fragile) amendment enables capital-S-Storytelling's ability to survive capitalism while simultaneously honing the idea of our very right to exploit, elicit, engage, and fund voices that shape generations (or at least Warhol's 15-Minute-Famous) while also using it to compete, to win. Mix that with a dash of hindsight and time, how soon will we make this same historical recipe to find the convenience (or more truthfully, the strategy) of reframing Melania Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell as feminists?
How I turn blue from the lack of breath I religiously hold, and purge sick from the blood that fills my belly from the tongue I surreptitiously bite, watching Atlanta, ATLANTA, theaters choose plays that hold mirrors to exploitation, but effectively perpetuate the continuation of, as Gunderson's lead character herself fears: helps privileged people feel better about being privileged.
Gunderson makes fun of the mask of male-gaze musicals, but the thing about those musicals is that it takes at least ten years from page to premiere and that's only if the story has been championed by all of pedagogy that came before it. How do you break the cycle of capitalizing on popular narrative while staying relevant with a decade-old story?
You don't. Hearing from a feminist playwright's 2015 political play in 2026 is what is keeping seats empty.
Yes, avatars are a reality and humanity's crowd-sourced exploitation is only adding to elite trends in IRL experiences, but theatre will always be essential storytelling. What it isn’t, at its core, is this system of performance. You can’t use sales tactics to support your sales people who are selling. It’s the same in theatre. The ways theaters must NOT dare to experiment these days, but rather have artists dance for lotteried dollars and please ticket-payers in order to keep the lights on is heartbreaking.
Theatre subscribers are dwindling and the theatrical Ponzi system isn't able to entice new takers without adding fresh voices. Reflection is imperative in the human experience, and, believe it or not, new generations of audiences are sick of their black mirrors starving for real ones. However, the access to instant information has taught us that the lessons of truth are easily researched and integrated in way less than a decade—more like ten minutes.
Theatre is also pretty politics. Pandering is the reason why so many con artists and grifters thrive in the performing arts. It’s cliche. Who knew the audiences would hold the same capabilities and captivities? It's more expensive than ever to sit in the dark, take in a show, and bathe in your signaled virtues from a cozy chair with the name of a donor’s placard drilled into the armrest. Easy to applaud Pavlovian when the lights go out or someone sings. Stand at an obligatory ovation for no reason other than to be seen taking a selfie doing so. Drink yourself numb at intermission. Theatre is a tool for exposure, but the subscribers are hiding the truths in offshore accounts. Why bother investing anymore?
Theatre isn't dead. Audiences sitting in darkness are. Gunderson herself says as much.
I asked my very favorite playwright, a thoroughly experienced, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, talented, educated, and wise friend who has known the depths of hate and heights of joy, why she thinks Gunderson's story was written in its current convention and has been produced so often, even today.
(Note: a trans woman answered, "Privilege is a curse.")
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