Can theater instigate awareness—or even action—in an era of overlapping crises?

“The concept of political theater clings to me like a shirt,” Erwin Piscator once wrote.
As a pioneer of political and epic theater, Piscator transformed the stages of Weimar
Germany with bold, experimental productions that confronted the burning issues of
his day and sought to mobilize audiences rather than merely entertain them. After
fleeing Nazi Germany, Piscator carried this mission to the United States, where he
founded the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research. When he
returned to Germany in 1951, his theater turned toward the project of sustaining a
new democratic culture in postwar West Germany.

Piscator died on March 30, 1966.
Sixty years later: what remains of his vision?
What is the role of political theater today?
Can art still change how we think and act in the world?
Can theater instigate awareness—or even action—in an era of overlapping crises?
Or has political theater lost its force in a time when politics itself is saturated with
performance and spectacle?

We invited recipients of the Erwin Piscator Award to discuss these and many more
questions at a panel on March 30.

So far, playwrights Doug Wright and J.T. Rogers, actor Ellen Burstyn, stage director Bartlett Sher, and James Nicola, former artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop have
confirmed their participation.

Moderated by Linda S. Chapman, Co-Director of the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive
Project and Founding President of Youth Arts New York

Reception to follow.