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During one of the many crises punctuating her husband’s tumultuous presidency, Lady Bird Johnson (Jennifer Blagen) reminds her husband that bravery runs in his family. “When your great-grandmother was hiding under the floorboards while the Comanches were raiding her house, did she flinch? It’s just not in your blood.” In another play, that line might have played as a hackneyed pep talk. In All the Way, it’s a reminder that a long history of racial violence and exploitation can be conveniently minimized by white people who want to pride themselves on incidents of isolated courage. This Lyndon Johnson feels under-appreciated by Civil Rights activists, but it’s hard to applaud political compromise when there’s a burning cross in your front yard. To read more, click here.

It could happen here. That cautionary warning is often used in speculative fiction, but is an integral theme of Building the Wall, coming this week to the intimate, black box-style Side Door performance space at Trustus Theatre.  To read more, click here.

In the not-so-distant future, a terrorist strike in New York has led President Trump to declare martial law and force millions of immigrants into detention camps. The situation quickly spirals out of control, and as chaos reigns in the haphazardly constructed bureaucracy, mass deaths quickly follow. That is the scenario New York-based writer Robert Schenkkan imagines in “Building the Wall,” a play running Sept. 23-Oct. 8 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. The play opens after the catastrophe has happened and revolves around a conversation between historian Gloria (played by West Palm Beach actor Karen Stephens) and detention-center supervisor Rick (Coral Gables actor Gregg Weiner), who is awaiting sentencing for “just following orders” when carrying out the federal policy that resulted in the deaths of scores of people under his charge. To read more, click here.

Hurricanes swirling the trees and seas into a frenzy, earthquakes shaking buildings into rubble, the government restricting the rights of Americans as the country becomes more dangerous for its own citizens — it’s not hard to imagine that perhaps this is the end of days. Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning, Emmy-nominated playwright Robert Schenkkan was inspired last October to illustrate his own imagined dark times in his play Building the Wall. It was written as a reaction to Trump’s cries to build a wall between Mexico and America to keep illegal immigrants out of the States. The two-person play, which takes place in a dystopian, Trumpian American prison, was penned well before the Donald took office. But with this work, Schenkkan captures the fear and horror many feel while living under this administration. To read more, click here.