Who is Theatre's Enemy?
A brief rant about the climate protest at Circle in the Square's production of An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People (1882) is Ibsen’s most polemical play. A man stands up to the wealthy few for the good of his community, they turn on him–he suffers. An arc, no doubt, true of the climate protesters booed at Sam Gold’s Circle in the Square production of the Ibsen classic a few nights ago. Videos populated the internet that same evening; one starts with a member of Extinction Rebellion speaking over the actors. He says, “I object to the silencing of scientists. I am very, very sorry to interrupt your night and this amazing performance. I am a theater artist, I work in the theater professionally and I am throwing my career away…”
The protestors tactfully staged their interruption during a moment when the house lights were on, during the famous “town hall scene.” Theater-goers at first assumed this is part of the play; metatheatrical stunts are all the rage these days. (In fact, the Thomas Ostermeier revival of Enemy currently running on the West End invites audience participation and questions in the very same town hall scene.) Michael Imperioli and another actor step forward and physically push a protester up the steps, while Jeremy Strong–in character as Dr. Thomas Stockmann–yells to “Let them speak.” Another video shows a man being dragged up the steps. As the protester resists, a calm female voice assures the audience from the god mic, “This evening’s performance shall resume momentarily…” like we’ve stepped into 1984. One actor points his finger at the protester, “You gotta write your own play! You gotta write your own play.” At this, the audience finally laughs and cheers.
The friction of this moment is heightened by Enemy itself–one of Ibsen’s best–which details the whistle-blowing and eventual cover up of contaminated water in a Norwegian town’s public baths. The baths, a burgeoning tourist attraction, are a financial lifeline, so the Mayor and the town’s businessmen are anxious to keep the poisoning under wraps. The very themes that make it apt for revival render Enemy the perfect staging ground for climate unrest. Whether the protesters intended to harness the play’s climate themes to decry Broadway’s hypocrisy or to reach a sympathetic audience, it is unclear–but the incident’s widespread debate begs, most glaringly, if theater can play a role in galvanizing any real political action.
Actor Michael Imperioli claimed on Instagram that though he agrees with Extinction Rebellion, he stayed in character as Mayor Stockmann while physically pushing the protesters out:
He said, “That wasn’t me, that was Patricia!” It’s unclear if there was an unspoken agreement to react in character, but it appears most actors did. All (excluding Strong) heckled the speakers–just as the various decision-makers drown out Dr. Stockmann in the play. The necessity for urgent climate action is one of the dramaturgical justifications for reviving an Ibsen play in the first place. Does showing that Mayor Stockmann would do the same today as he would then actually prove anything? Doesn’t play-acting with protesters render your play redundant?
Augusto Boal, the legendary Brazilian theorist is, of course, the first and last word on what interventions in the theater can do for us. In his preface to Theatre of the Oppressed he talks about audience participation in theatrical spaces as a way to disrupt oppressive structures in and outside the theater: “The audience mustn’t just liberate its Critical Conscience, but its body too. It needs to invade the stage and transform the images that are shown there. To transform is to be transformed. The action of transforming is, in itself, transforming.” Both actor and spectator must be part of this transformation. Unfortunately, this is what the actors in Enemy fail to recognize.
Isabella Hammad’s novel, Enter Ghost, follows a cohort of Palestinian theatre artists who stage a production of Hamlet that attempts to interrogate Israeli occupation. At one point, the protagonist, Sonia, attends a protest with the director. Running away from violence she reflects, “I had a horrible, useless revelation, which was that in some way the meaning of our Hamlet depended on the suffering. The context gave our Hamlet its force….our play needed the protests but the protests did not need our play.”
In other words, Sam Gold’s production of Enemy needs the climate crisis to be relevant. The actors of Enemy can fold Extinction Rebellion’s protest into the theatrical expression, but protest cannot emerge as a wholly original conceit of play-making. Theatre is the parasite of social progress, not the other way around. At its best, Western theatre can mirror a person’s faults back to them–just as the protesters revealed performers are only capable of re-enacting the dynamics we already recognize as true.
It isn’t possible to replicate protest in the theatre–even literally. Les Miserables’ “Do You Hear the People Sing” is evidently a series of step touches. (My friend Ynika notes there was a Just Stop Oil protest staged at Les Mis last year.) There are never enough ensemble members to properly play pretend at a real crowd. Besides, actors wielding signs onstage always seem a bit un-self-conscious and silly; unlike masses raising consciousness in the streets–all eyes and attention are already on you. In fact, people have paid money to hear what you have to say. In turn, you get a couple hours of their precious time. As theatre artists, we’d be neglectful to ignore the time shared is the audience’s as well as ours. Protest turns theatre on its head; it out-theatres theatre. And hey, we should celebrate that! It might be the closest thing to living, breathing drama we have these days.
Sources I referenced & used for good measure:
An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen
Theatre of the Oppressed - Augusto Boal
“Generic Complexity in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People” - Thomas Van Laan
Also!! Ynika recently wrote a really great essay and they’ve joined the oh-so-depressing-and-embarassing Substack mafia. They’ve always been gracious enough to help me make these posts somewhat presentable and normal-sounding so I just feel lucky whenever they let me read their prose. You should follow their page here before it drops :)
If you give a monkey Twitter access….
The tagline for the recently announced Harold and the Purple Crayon movie is “Everything he draws is about to get real.” Which is the kind of mashup of jargon and practical copywriting that turns into jibberish. It’s legitimately stuck in my head. The sentence sounds like a narrator for the FIFA Xbox games attempted to do highlights for an unemployed FIT grad’s hours in the studio. I just love how stupid it is!
I’ll be back soon!
Lukia