I
f someone were to give you a
free-association test and say,
“Broadway,” the first word that
would probably spring to mind
would be “musicals.” If you thought
about it a little longer, you might come
up with “prestige London transfers”
or “star-driven revivals of beloved
classics.” But “experimental, politically
engaged works that challenge and sub-
vert mainstream tastes, beliefs, and ex-
pectations by a racially, ethnically, and
sexually diverse group of artists”? Not
so much. By and large, those in search
of provocative, boundary-pushing,
diverse theater have had to head Off-
or Off-Off-Broadway into that realm
known as “downtown.”
In recent years, the dam between
uptown and downtown has started to
spring a leak or two—and this season,
the floodgates have opened. A rush of
new productions written and directed
by artists with a distinctly downtown
sensibility are reshaping the Broadway
landscape. It would be an impossible
exercise to generalize what these di-
rectors and playwrights are doing, not
least because part of their appeal is
the striking originality of their per-
spectives. But it’s fair to say that all of
them are creating work that speaks to
the moment in which we live.
Take perhaps the most conven-
tional-seeming, but subtly subversive,
of these new works, Lucas Hnath’s
Hillary and Clinton, which opened
on Broadway this spring. Starring a
customarily fantastic Laurie Metcalf
as Hillary and John Lithgow as her
nettlesome helpmeet, Bill, Hnath’s
play takes place in a New Hampshire
hotel room on the eve of that state’s
2008 Democratic primary. He wrote
it that year and has resisted any im-
pulses to update it in relation to the
2016 election. But rather than dating
the work, its time-capsule character
serves to underline the relentlessnessCAST OF CHARACTERS
from far left: Playwrights
Matthew Lopez, Taylor Mac, Jackie
Sibblies Drury, Aleshea Harris,
Lucas Hnath, Martyna Majok,
Jeremy O. Harris, and Ming Peiffer.
Hair, Ilker Akyol; makeup, Mariel
Barrera. Menswear Editor: Michael
Philouze. Details, see In This Issue.
Photographed by Anton Corbijn.
Sittings Editor: Alexandra Cronan.
A new generation is radically reshaping the Broadway landscape.
Adam Green meets the play wrights, actors, and directors adding
their urgent, new political voices to American theater.