On a Saturday evening, President Donald Trump’s Twitter followers saw him address an unusual topic for his feed: theater.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s one-man Broadway play, Terms of my Surrender, was advertised as a “subversive piece of theater” that hoped to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. According to the New York Times, Moore said each night of the play’s 12-week run, he left a box open in the theater, just in case the president noticed the show.
And on Oct. 28, Moore got his wish.
Though Trump did not attend the show at any point during its run, he took to Twitter to comment on the recently closed show, which made $4.2 million.
Moore responded with a barrage of tweets attacking the president. He questioned Trump’s priorities, addressing issues that Trump was ignoring to make the tweet and challenging Trump’s logic, referring to the play as a “smash hit” rather than a bomb.
Susan Burgess, a political science professor, said she was not surprised by Trump addressing issues that were not presidential.
“Part of the way he came into office was on the basis of breaking norms that had long been in place about the parameters of the presidency,” Burgess said.
She said Trump has been effective in establishing his political brand through his Twitter.
“Whether his comments about Moore are correct or not, the political phenomenon is that he has been able to use Twitter to get his message out,” Burgess said.
Playwriting professor Charles Smith said theater and other arts catching the attention of politicians is a fairly recent development. However, Smith said theater has been making comments about politics since its inception.
“The difference of today is that politicians rarely pushed back,” Smith said. “Now we have politicians who feel the sting of art and want to push back.”
He said the entire guiding purpose behind art is to shape public opinion.
Even if a work featured no political commentary, those plays were trying to convey a message that there were no political issues at the time, Smith said.
Head of the graduate directing program Dennis Delaney said theater serves many purposes, one of them being to educate viewers on issues they may not be knowledgeable about.
Delaney, who is also an associate professor of theater and directing, said Ohio University’s division of theater has never been one to shy away from political content, featuring plays such as The Library last academic year, which was about school shootings and made “relevant commentary on gun violence.”
Additionally, Delaney is preparing to direct The Government Inspector, a 150-year-old Russian play that is about political corruption. The play will be performed during Spring Semester at OU.
He said the play “absolutely still has relevance.”
Smith said the exchange of tweets will likely result in other artists pursuing the same challenge that Moore did.
“If I write something and Trump calls it garbage, I’ve hit a nerve and I’m successful,” he said.
Delaney said determining the success level of a play is difficult, especially in the case of Trump and Moore’s discrepancies in their analyses, but said “if it was a bomb, it probably would have closed (earlier).”
Smith looked at success more from an artistic standpoint and said it comes down to whether the artists achieved the initial goals of their creations.
In this case, Delaney said Trump’s comments likely meant that Moore was happy with the result of the run.
“The fact that it ran for its full contract, got people talking and ruffled Trump’s feathers, makes it a success for me,” Delaney said.
