What is the role of art—and specifically theatre—in the thought and struggle of the left? Why have most social and political theorists and commentators on the left become so estranged from the understanding of art’s significance that they see it as little more than a means of popularizing ideas or giving an audience a quick fix on some controversial issue?

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The present essay supplements The Play’s the Thing: Censorship, Theatre and Ideology with an argument that will surprise many readers of the earlier piece. The Corrie controversy continues but it has now largely become an example of how easily we get trapped by ideology in simple alternatives, false dichotomies and fatal assumptions.

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About the recent actions of the New York Theatre Workshop in canceling (or “postponing” as is now claimed) plans to produce the play My Name is Rachel Corrie and what this event reveals about our historical situation. As an actor, playwright, and cultural critic I am particularly concerned about this event. But I also hope to show that it reveals—with uncommon clarity—the new ideological situation that defines post 9-11 Amerika.

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