Theatre has become a slow art. It takes time to write a play, and then additional time to get someone to produce it; no wonder, then, that current events are most likely to show up in cabaret and standup. (Political theatre's version of super-timeliness tends to be, like, the past five years.) And drama requires a certain slowness from us, too. You can casually wander out of a movie, pause a television show, check social media as you read a book, or-I don't know-knit. But the scant hundred minutes of Sarah Gancher's Off Broadway play "Russian Troll Farm," for instance, have to unfold in the molasses time of unadulterated, undistracted viewing. Luckily, that fight for our scattered attention, and even the topical delay, can become part of the show itself.
Gancher's "workplace comedy," now at the Vineyard Theatre, is set during the six-month run-up to the 2016 Presidential election, and dramatizes Russian cyber interference by the Internet Research Agency, in St. Petersburg. For years, the real-life Russian company used bogus social-media accounts to sow fake news and real division, apparently manufacturing millions of tweets' worth of institutional mistrust and norm-eroding nastiness. (In Gancher's play, we hear a supervisor exhorting her underlings to normalize the word "pussy" to diminish Americans' shock at Donald Trump's hot-mike vulgarities.) Despite the intervening insurrections and invasions, the world of "Russian Troll Farm" doesn't feel that distant. Perhaps you recognize the still constant drip of conspiracy theories in your own feeds, or maybe you saw this very play, which aired online during the pandemic shutdown, just before the election in 2020.
Esta historia es de la edición February 26, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición February 26, 2024 de The New Yorker.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.