On Monday night, at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, an audience was treated to a powerful live reading of "The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts," by stars including John Lithgow, Jason Alexander, Annette Bening, Kyra Sedgwick and Alyssa Milano. The play, written by the Pulitzer Prize winning Robert Schenkkan, was a dramatization of the Mueller Report that used the actual text for dialogue.
In an email interview with me, Schenkkan explained that he wrote the play out of frustration that the Trump administration had been "successful in obstructing the narrative" from the moment that Attorney General William Barr outlined the findings.
Given the partisan political climate, the play seemed to be undertaking the role of Congress -- bringing the findings to life and giving the public a sort of thorough congressional hearing that we simply have not seen yet.
The results were powerful. The actors narrated parts of the action, using text from the report, while others acted out the lines as if they were the people in the report. Seeing Lithgow, as President Trump, delivering lines with furious indignation about closing down the "witchhunt" investigation and barking orders to his staff to follow through carried a much greater wallop than reading the dry text.
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Thorough congressional hearings have always been an important form of political theater. Hearings have historically served the function of focusing public attention on pertinent issues and educating the public about problems -- from failed policies to political corruption -- that have plagued Washington.
Since the release of the Mueller Report, House Democrats have struggled to shed light on the contents of the report and its implications. Instead, Americans have been left with a lengthy and complicated document which on its own is unlikely to stimulate a political response.
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The play focuses on 10 possible instances of obstruction of justice. Actors including Kevin Kline, Ben McKenzie, Alfre Woodard, Gina Gershon, and Aidan Quinn, helped bring to life the devastating findings from the Mueller report on just how far President Donald Trump was willing to go to stifle a major investigation into his administration and into Russian interference in the election.
In contrast to the way that President Trump and Attorney General Barr have depicted the report, Schenkkan's play shows that Mueller's team documented a shocking abuse of presidential power. Billed as "The Play That Attorney General William Barr Doesn't Want You To See," according to the press release, "The Investigation" is a dramatic counterpoint to the disinformation campaign that came out of the administration.
Schenkkan's hope was to use the arts so that the play's audience would gain a better sense of the report's contents which have been discussed extensively and even became a best-selling book -- but not clearly or fully read.
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"The 'story' tends to get lost. A theatrical event like this makes the story very clear and easy to understand. It gives focus and emotion," he said in his email. Artists, he wrote, "surface the stories that need to be told and do so in a way which people can absorb. They provoke introspection, conversation and a sense of community -- all of which are sorely lacking right now."
This play, along with other comparable efforts -- such as a graphic novel that is in the works based on the report -- addresses one of the most fundamental flaws in the investigation: Without any substantive congressional hearings comparable to the Watergate committee in 1973, Democrats who favored the impeachment process would never really have a chance to sway the public.
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https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/25/opinions/mueller-report-play-political-theater-zelizer/index.html
