Who says the arts aren’t the best place for intellectual dullards and hate-filled creeps?/Image: Licensed Adobe stock,
Long the province of gays and high-school misfits, the theater is set to get a jolt right-wing when three conservative retellings of classic U.S. stage plays make their debut this summer. It’s the latest move in the Alt-crusade to take back our culture from the liberals and prove once-and-for-all we can be fun, entertaining, intelligent, and incisive just like they can. Three Republican lawmakers have signed on to direct the dramaturgical diversions set to begin airing in Washington D.C. in May.
The National Endowment for the Arts, a government-funded organization that we at Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) have happily watched be gutted funding-wise is using some of the meager funds it still has to produce these plays, President Donald Trump decreed they must in an executive order.
We spoke with the revivals’ directors and other conservative community members working on the plays.
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Wild, Wild, West Indeed
In May, “Annie, Get Your Gun Lobby” will open at the Barry Goldwater Memorial Theater in Southwest. It retells the life story of Annie Oakley, as a moralless gun industry shill–in other words, an Alt kind of gal. Oakley, played by Ivanka Trump, is a sharpshooter starring in the show “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” who quits that gig to become one of the first lobbyists for the firearms industry.
“We really wanted to show through Annie Oakley’s life–or our fictionalized version of it–that the gun lobby is part of a proud tradition of grassroots activism aimed at protecting our right to have guns so we can, like, hunt and protect ourselves from…well, stuff,” said Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
Oakley falls in love with fellow marksman Frank Butler, and wackiness ensues.
The original show spawned some of the country’s most beloved showtunes from what was arguably musical theater’s golden age, the 1960s. White House policy aide Stephen Miller rewrote the lyrics to them to fit the new ideological bent of the play. “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” became “Doin’ What Comes Unnatur’lly,” a song about standing by President Trump despite his galling unfitness for his current job, “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun” became “You Can’t Protect Yourself From the Government Without a Gun. “Anything You Can Do” retained its title but overall became a number underscoring the idea that Republicans do everything Democrats do, but better. “No Business Like Show Business” also retained its title, but this classic piece of Americana became a ditty about how Trump treats politics as a reality show starring himself.
I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff
While Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” has been analyzed, dissected, and pontificated on by dramatic and literary scholars for decades, the red-state retelling of it will present a simpler view of main characters George and Martha’s volatile marriage, manifested in their constant fighting based on their unfulfilled wish for a child.
Instead, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Midterm Elections,” tells the story of another George and Martha, Republican residents of Virginia who are not at all afraid of Virginia’s recent midterm elections in which Democrats made significant inroads into state politics. They still fight a lot, however.
“The Democrats would like for people to think their recent wins in Virginia were the beginning of some blue wave that will sweep the country, a referendum on our leader, President Donald Trump,” said the play’s director Kayleigh McEnany, Spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “That’s so not the case. We’re still in charge, in Washington and all over the country.
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The play McEnany’s directing demonstrates that when George and Martha invite two Democrats over for dinner and have knock-down-drag-out fights with each other in their presence, they get to the heart of Virginia politics.
“George and Martha are really fighting about the soul of the Republican party, and ultimately, the country,” said McEnany.
“I like plays. Sometimes. And the acting is fun,” Ivanka said of her starring role in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Midterm Elections.”
Berry Biased
The Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Ca.)-helmed “The Cherry-Picked-Facts Orchard” is based on Anton Chekhov’s, Russian–which is now essentially synonymous with American, given The Kremlin’s meddling in U.S politics.–stage classic, “The Cherry Orchard.”
Nunes’ “Orchard” tells the story of an American kleptocrat and kakistocracrat who discovers an orchard where false statements, half-truths, and misleading assertions grow on trees. He picks from it and pens a bogus memo that promises to show that an FBI investigation into a Republican lawmaker is tainted by political bias and personal grudges. The memo fails and the politician who wrote it fades into ignominy.
“When I heard the NEA was putting this play on, I had to be part of it–it’s about me!” Nunes said. “Hopefully, it will add credence to the fact that I’m a Trump crony who’s likely going to be indicted in the Russia probe, See, I’m all about putting the truth out there and letting the American people do with it what they like.”
None other than President Trump makes a cameo in the play as the man who tends the orchard.
“It seemed fitting, given that the orchard is basically a fib farm, if you will, where untrue utterances grow. I love him dearly, but President Trump tells a lot of lies–like a lot, a lot. Something like five-a-day, minimum,” Nunes said.
I’ve Always Depended on the Kindness of Senators
Oh, yes, readers: the Tennessee Williams classic, “A Streetcar Named Desire” gets it’s own reactionary retelling, as well! In “A Streetcar Named Deadlock,” Mitch McConnell directs an all-Republican Congress member cast in a story sure to have you at the edge of your legislative seat.
The upcoming production tells the story of the Louisiana state legislature during a steamy, Bayou summer. The arrival of a brutish president from up north upends their ho-hum lives, ending in an act so shocking and unspeakable, you’ve gotta see it to believe it. You’ll be well-prepared, though, thanks to President Trump’s daily shocking and unspeakable actions.
“I’m from the South and I have to deal with the boorish Trump ever day, so this story of an era of genteel Dixie manners coming up against the ‘locker-room talk’ of a Yankee cretin really spoke to me,” McConnell said.
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The Great Red Way
Those plays will be shown on an outdoor, covered stage on the Mall in Washington. Go book your tickets today, dear readers! And save us at SYRW a seat.
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
