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.
Denne historien er fra February 26, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra February 26, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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FAMILY STYLE
\"La Maison,\" on Apple TV+.
CLOSE QUARTERS
Jen Silverman's \"The Roommate\" and Celine Song's \"Family.\"
IMMATERIAL GIRL
Sophie is gone. Her music lives on.
MERELY PLAYERS
Race, politics, and the theatre collide in Alan Hollinghurst's
MOVE TO TRASH
Is it time for a new Constitution?
RHYTHM COLLECTOR
Eblis Álvarez's Meridian Brothers unites the many strands of Latin music.
Ambrose
Lily wants to live in the old days. Her mom, Debra, says, No, you don’t, because in the old days all women did was cook and sew and die in childbirth, but Lily still wishes she could travel back in time.
THE ESCAPE ARTIST
The Italian priest who helps women in the Mafia flee the criminal underworld.
UNCOMMITTED
Among the Gaza protest voters in Michigan.
SENSORY OVERLOAD
A wild Danish restaurant combines avant-garde dining with immersive theatre.