News

As timely as the latest political scandal, “Building the Wall” issued like a blaze of lighting from the mind of Robert Schenkkan, the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who grew up in Austin. 

The 90-minute, two-person drama about America after an envisioned impeachment of President Donald Trump has its regional premiere at the University of Texas on Thursday and runs through Sept. 10. A public conversation will take place on Sept. 7 at the Brockett Theatre. To read more, click here.

Last night, The Fountain Theater closed their production of BUILDING THE WALL. Theirs was the first production of a National New Play Network rollout, driven by the passion and enthusiasm of Artistic Director Stephen Sachs, Producer Simon Levy, and director Michael Michettii. The original cast was Bo Foxworth and Judith Moreland, later replaced by Victoria Platt. The show was extended three times and eventually played for five months, or 80 performances for 6300 patrons. Since its LA opening in February, it has had 14 other domestic productions and has an additional thirteen currently scheduled for the near future, plus productions in Europe. Words matter. Make your voice known. Resist with what you have.

• The new play, "Building the wall" envisions mass deportations and unlawful detainment as Greek tragedy. His play Philoctetes, Sophocles tells a story of deceit: The Greek commander Odysseus wants to convince the titular exiled war hero to fight again, and he enlists Neoptolemus, a young, impressionable boy to lie for him. "I know, my boy, it isn't part of your nature to tell untruths or resort to double-dealing," he says to Achilles's son, "but victory's a prize worth gaining." Neoptolemus is persuaded, and the plot centers on his uneasiness with these double-dealings, and on the growing trust between him and Philoctetes. In the end, Neoptolemus's compassion and integrity override the Greek interest, and he comes clean, confessing Odysseus's scheme to Philoctetes. The play represents the failure of rhetorical manipulation in the face of one's own natural moral intuitions, our own sense of right and wrong. To read more, click here.

Diane Paulus, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Robert Schenkkan discuss how the Public Theater’s recent production of Julius Caesar fits into a grand artistic tradition. To read more, click here.