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America's War on Theater

Daniel Blank reviews James Shapiro’s “The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.”

Ambitious and undaunted, Dies “saw which way the political winds were blowing” and set sail in that direction, eventually finding himself at the helm of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (laying the groundwork for Joe McCarthy’s crusade a decade and a half later). The fact that Flanagan had spent time as a Guggenheim Fellow studying theater in Europe (including the Soviet Union)—a tradition she found to be “intellectually rigorous” and “committed to education and propaganda”—didn’t help her cause. As I was writing this review, it was reported that Florida governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Ron DeSantis decided without explanation to veto all grants for arts organizations; it is no coincidence that he has championed book bans and education mandates that have led to the removal of Shakespeare from school libraries and classrooms.

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