Plays as Protest
Good Night and Good Luck, Les Misérables, and The Revolution’s Promise
I visited my daughter in Washington, DC in June of 2025. We watched the World Pride parade together. Iran’s parade float was joyous and bright (and then we bombed them).
The night before the parade, in my hotel room, I watched CNN’s live broadcast of the play Good Night and Good Luck with George Clooney. It recreates the work of newsman Edward R. Murrow, who broadcast the evils of the McCarthy era, with its endless searches through notes about attendance at the political meetings of people opposed to capitalism, and its slandering of anyone who could be painted with the huge brush of communism even by remote association. It was a time of government overreach. And we’re there again. Like then, we are surrounded by exaggerated fears. We are told it’s time to eradicate the rights of people who may think differently, love differently, or have come here with hope for a better future. The Trump administration has fired people just for participating in DEI efforts or for working on cases they were assigned which investigated Trump. It has deported peaceful immigrants and detained international students. There is talk of denaturalizing citizens. Let that sink in for a moment. Someone gets accepted into a country that respects free speech. No, that’s partly built and sustained on the power of free speech. They work hard and pay taxes and vote and care. Then, decades later, that person could become stateless for a belief because the country they joined has backslid on freedom.
Murrow’s stance and words were brave and they made a difference. Today, we have more than Murrow. We have thousands of us on social media and in other forms of communication. Good Night and Good Luck is a reminder for us all that we can succeed.
David Cromer, the play’s director, said, “It’s always important to know our history.” Other plays have also been reminders of history.
Les Misérables is based on a fight for Freedom in France in the early 1800’s (Note: after the French Revolution). In case you are one of the few people in the world who have never seen it (or read the book), the musical is about university students who support the cause of the downtrodden. The students make a brave stand but are brutally lost.
I’ve been so many times that when I hear the opening notes, I’m immediately thrilled to the core. I truly love this story, and how it shows love in a time of desperation. It is a powerful statement about the horrors of abusing the poorest among us to make the richest better off (as the current establishment is doing). BUT its also being seen as a MAGA anthem. Trump is trying to position himself at Jean Valjean, even though many see him as more like the money-grabbing opportunist Thenardier. Both sides of the current American schism are claiming this important piece of work as their own. I find this fascinating, even though I definitely believe Trump is no Valjean.
There are also stories which are as powerful as Les Misérables and far more current, but which are not available on Broadway. I wasn’t able to find a live performance of the play The Revolution’s Promise, but I found parts of it performed online. The simple reading blends Palestinian voices from our time in a way that made me cold inside, angry, and also frightened. Here are two small pieces of the many stories told in the YouTube performance I found:
1. Poet Dareen Tatour tells of being convicted for “Inciting terrorism” because of a poem. She was imprisoned for over two years in an Israeli settlement, where she reports multiple attempts were made on her life. When finally released, she was told that if she published or even performed her poem, she would return to prison. A poem. Powerful poem, to so drastically change a young woman’s life.
You might remember that I started this Substack writing about the neighborhood poetry group I sometimes attend. Much of our poetry these days is a response to American revenge capitalism and to Trump. As it should be. Perhaps these backwater poems will be as powerful as Dareen’s. But for the sake of my neighbors, I hope we do not fall this far.
It could happen.
2. Ali Abu Yaseen, a writer, actor, and director, shares his story of the day the Al-Michal Cultural Center was bombed out of existence. He was going to debut a play there that day, with a cast of 14 girls. They were warned to call it off, and did so. And lived. That night, the Cultural Center in Gaza was destroyed. In spite of their loss, Yaseen and others have performed plays on the rubble of the Center.
I won’t tell more of the stories. Readers might consider reading or listening to them. It’s a deeply moving work. I have linked to the full script below. The Revolution’s Promise is a play, a creation, a thing that is bigger in whole even than the moving stories of creators that make up its parts. Some of the people whose words are included have been shot or imprisoned based on the photos they took, the plays they wrote, or the power of their simple poems.
We have evidence that the Israelis are afraid of the stories that appear in The Revolution’s Promise.
We have Trump attending Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, attempting to make it a MAGA story about the evils of the deep state keeping the common man down. I don’t buy it. Do you?
We started with George Clooney’s masterwork meant to remind us that brave Americans have beaten back hate in the past.
Other plays speak to the horrors of oppression, from The Sound of Music to Cabaret. Plays of all kinds can be a powerful form of speaking truth. Maybe this would be a good time to go to the theater.
Good Night and Good Luck Official Broadway Site (note it is no longer playing)
The Musical That Makes MAGA’s Rebel Hearts Sing, Politico.
A Globe-trotting Palestinian Play has Arrived in Houston, Texas Monthly.
Dareen Tatour Sentenced to Five Months in prison Over Poem, Aljazeera
Rising From the Ruins: A Theater Persists in Gaza, American Theater.
Scripts for The Revolution’s Promise