'N/A'

 

I didn’t see N/A, the political two-hander by Mario Correa, when it ran at Lincon Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in 2024, so when it showed up on WNET (Channel 13), the Public Broadcasting Service outlet in New York City, in May, I DVR’d it. 

I finally got around to watching it a few nights ago, not planning to do more than see what it was all about, so to speak.  Then I considered writing it up as I have done with many plays since I started Rick On Theater 17 years ago.  I decided I’d give it a try.  So. here goes.

At the top of the PBS broadcast, a voice-over explains that the play is

A behind-closed-doors conversation closely inspired by two larger-than-life public figures.  Despite their clashing ideas about government, both hold deep convictions for progress in the future of the country.

Let’s get the book on N/A down for the record first.  The intermissionless, 80-minute play had its world premiere on 23 June 2024 at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway house, the Newhouse Theater, after opening for previews on 14 March. 

Though playing at a venue of the non-profit Lincoln Center Theater, the première of N/A wasn’t an LCT production.  It was an independent, commercial rental of the Newhouse, produced by a team of outside backers assembled by veteran commercial theater producer Jeffrey Richards.

The limited performances of N/A, which were initially scheduled to end on 4 August, were extended through 1 September.  The play closed after 96 regular and preview performances.

The telecast I watched aired on Sunday, 31 May 2026, as part of the Theater Close-Up series produced by The WNET Group.  (Theater Close-Up isn’t a national PBS network program.  It’s a localized, curated series produced specifically by WNET.)

Directed for the stage by Diane Paulus (the TV director was Donna Zaccaro), the production was recorded live on stage at its Lincoln Center home toward the end of its 2024 run in August, right before the production officially wrapped its performances.

Unlike many new plays that spend several years in multiple regional tryouts, academic workshops, or staged public readings, N/A was fast-tracked specifically to meet the political urgency of a major election year (the 2024 presidential rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump). 

The traditional multi-year developmental pipeline for N/A was bypassed through the intervention of Richards, who has an extensive record of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows (among them, the current Maybe Happy Ending—6 Tonys, including Best Musical, and 6 Drama Desks, including Outstanding Musical—and last year’s Beetlejuice and Glengarry Glen Ross).

Upon reading Correa’s script, Richards realized that the play’s thematic tension was vital for the immediate cultural moment.  So, instead of routing the play through a non-profit theater’s multi-season workshop system, Richards formed an independent, commercial producing coalition. 

The team bypassed the standard developmental workshops by mounting a commercial production and renting the Newhouse Theater directly.  This meant the play didn’t undergo the typical public “try-out” or laboratory phase associated with standard regional non-profit commissions.

Through this streamlined commercial process, the script went from an unproduced text directly into New York rehearsals, transitioning straight to its first public performance.  It also attracted creatives like the Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus (Best Direction of a Musical, Pippin, 2013) and actors Holland Taylor (who has a proven track record with political solo-shows like Ann, the 2013 Broadway monodrama about Texas governor Ann Richards) and Ana Villafañe (who won a Theatre World Award for her Outstanding Debut Performance as Gloria Estefan in the 2015 Broadway jukebox musical On Your Feet!).

Now, let’s look at the play itself (which I’ve largely been avoiding till now, you’ll have noticed).  It got a fair amount of coverage when it made its way to Lincoln Center, but that was not only two years ago, but it was also a summertime run—and a limited run at that—so not everyone was paying attention.

In a nutshell, N/A is a generational debate between two unnamed congresswomen, “N,” the first female Speaker of the House, and “A,” the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.  Though their names are never used on stage—and the initials appear only in the program (or, in my case, in the credits at the end of the broadcast)—these figures are modeled explicitly on Nancy Pelosi (b. 1940), Democratic Congresswoman from California since 1987 and the 52nd speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (b. 1989), since 2019, Democratic U.S. Representative from New York and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

(Just so everybody knows: I’m closer to Pelosi’s age—not quite seven years her junior—than to AOC’s—almost 43 years her senior.  I’m not sure what significance that holds, though.)

Lead producer Richards moved the script to Off-Broadway production at an accelerated pace because he saw that it dovetailed with Real Politics in the field, the presidential election of 2024, and he wanted to catch the wave, but to an extent, that seems to have backfired a little.  The presidential race was such an attention-grabber that most people, including avid theatergoers, were paying more heed, I think, to the real world than to an Off-Broadway play.

The night of the official première, 23 June 2024, was a Sunday, an unusual night to schedule an opening.  But this wasn’t actually an opening in the traditional sense of the term.  It was a gala event for high-profile political figures, media personalities, and theater elites who Richards hoped would start whispering, posting, and talking about the show.

The producers set a strict embargo on the press, however, telling all publications that their representatives (i.e., reviewers) may watch the show at designated press previews or the première night, but they can’t publish reviews until Thursday evening, 27 June.

(Because the public couldn’t read the reviews until 27 June, outlets like the New York Times or New York Theatre Guide labeled the 27th, the day the show “unveiled” itself to the world, not the 23rd, as N/A’s “opening.”)

What no one could have predicted, was that Thursday evening, 27 June 2024, was the night of the momentous presidential debate between the Democratic candidate and incumbent president, Joe Biden, and the Republican challenger and former president, Donald Trump—and Biden gave his disastrous performance that changed the presidential campaign. 

This created a fascinating, accidental intersection of art and reality: the very night the play “officially” revealed its political commentary to the wider public was the exact same night the landscape of Real Politics completely shifted. 

On the one hand, this occurrence enhanced the focus on the play (which was, of course, about a different political debate), but on the other, it probably distracted many potential theatergoers to focusing on the real-world politics that was far more consequential.

Playwright Mario Correa (b. 1969 in Chile) describes himself as a “political junkie,” so all this background and foreground focus on elections and campaigning, both by the play’s presenters and its potential audience, is in his wheelhouse.

Correa immigrated to the United States with his family at age six, growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C.  (That’s Montgomery County.  At the end of her life, my mother lived in Bethesda, and I grew up in Chevy Chase, the first town north of D.C., before Bethesda.)  He spent his early career immersed in real-world government, working directly as a congressional aide during the late 1980s and 1990s.

At 17, he campaigned for House candidate Connie Morella, then running to represent Maryland’s 8th district (Montgomery County), setting him on a political path.  The liberal Republican—Correa labeled her “a very progressive Republican” in a 2025 interview for Barrington Stage—was elected in 1986 and served from ’87 until 2003; Correa became her aide.  This experience gave him a firsthand understanding of the inner workings, rules, and unspoken dynamics of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Washington Post reported that Pelosi also took office as a congresswoman in 1987.  Because there weren’t many women in the House, they became unlikely friends across party lines.  When gerrymandering made it untenable for Morella to be reelected, she was defeated by a Democrat and left Congress.

Correa left Congress upon Morella’s defeat, but he became a congressional lobbyist for high-tech corporations.  “I loved the Hill,” he confirmed in a July 2024 interview for the Theatre Development Fund, referring to Capitol Hill, “but I didn’t love the post-Hill lobbying world.”  So, after a few more years, writing comedy at night, he “quit my day job.”  That was 2005. 

(Reporters, politicians, and government workers and staffers, like Correa, use “the Hill” and “Capitol Hill” metonymically to refer to the work of senators and representatives.  I did this, too, habitually, when I was 15 and had a summer job in 1962 in the congressional office of New Hampshire Representative Chester Merrow [1906-74], also a liberal Republican, who was running, unsuccessfully as it turned out, for the senate.  [I returned to prep school for my sophomore year before the September primary that cost Merrow his seat in Congress and his bid for the Senate nomination.]  I picked up the usage from my longer-serving colleagues in Merrow’s office who guided me in learning the office routines.)

Correa left politics behind, he says, but admits it still pops up in his writing.  (His Off-Broadway comedy Tail! Spin! [New York International Fringe Festival, 2012] is about political sex scandals.)  He sees N/A as “kind of a love letter to Connie and everything I learned” working at the Capitol.

Of Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, as well as their avatars, Correa avers, “I’m really conscious of the fact that I admire these real-life women. I enjoy writing about them . . . .”  He admonishes us, however, “This is not the biography of Nancy Pelosi or AOC.”

Because the playwright has such positive feelings about the actual congresswomen, however, there’s no mistaking who their fictional doppelgangers are—the initialese of the program and the absence of names on the stage notwithstanding.  As Gillian Russo points out in her New York Theatre Guide notice, it’s “immediately obvious.”

(In point of fact, no names are spoken in the play—with the exception of Oscar Alberto Martínez and Angie Valeria, a would-be refugee and his infant daughter who drowned in Rio Grande in 2019.  Donald Trump, for instance, is referred to only as “that man” and a few more colorful descriptives.)

To be clear, N/A isn’t actually a documentary play, or even a “docudrama,” which allows for considerable fictionalization.  Correa’s dialogue isn’t drawn from any documents or recordings.  (Tail! Spin!, unlike N/A, is a verbatim documentary play.  Correa compiled the script from the actual text messages, e-mails, and public statements of the politician-characters.)

In N/A, the words of “N” and “A,” though based on Correa’s interpretations of Pelosi’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s positions and statements, are composed by him.  They’re his distillations of what he believes the women have said or might say. 

(For an examination of documentary theater, see my article “Performing Fact: The Documentary Drama“ [9 October 2009], as well as later posts “‘On The Real: Documentary Theatre‘“ [15 September 2017, 18 September 2017, 21 September 2017, 24 September 2017, and 27 September 2017], and “Documentary and Investigative Theater“ [10 September 2025].)

Correa, the PBS voice-over explained, focused N/A’s text around the historical events that transpired between “2018, when the Democrats win the House [6 November] . . . to the 2022 midterms [8 November] when the Republicans take it back.” 

(Actually, the first scene occurs the day after “A”’s historic upset primary election victory in the New York State primaries (26 June 2018)—which, in New York’s 14th district (Queens and the Bronx), essentially means she’ll almost certainly win the general election in November—and the play ends on 6 November 2025, when “N” announces to the House that she wouldn’t seek a leadership role in Democratic Caucus.)

As WaPo also reported, Correa said that as the play developed in rehearsals, “it became clear that [it] was less about the mechanics of legislation than he intended and more about two powerful women trying to figure each other out.”

But, as I’ve established, it isn’t a portrait of two real-life congresswomen whose politics and goals clashed.  It’s a fictional debate that dramatizes the intergenerational clash of the political philosophies of an old-line centrist Democratic party leader and a brash insurgent from the left wing of the party.  (Something we’re seeing a good deal of right now in the run-up to the midterm elections in several districts.)

And therein lies the problem I had with the play.  So, let’s get into that.

First, let me state that I found the two performances powerful and engaging.  In my estimation, there’s no way that either of these actresses didn’t feel what the characters were feeling, believe what the characters were saying.

I’ve seen Holland Taylor, who plays “N,” and she’s strong, even fierce, and sure of herself in the most convincing way.  She’s the pragmatist, and David Barbour of Lighting & Sound America dubs her “the sternest of schoolmistresses.” 

I hadn’t seen Ana Villafañe (“A”), but she measured up to her opponent surefootedly and steadfastly with all the assertiveness I could expect.  In the Wall Street Journal, Charles Isherwood writes that she “put[s] cool but clear passion into her performance.”  She’s the idealist.

Taylor, for reasons including one I’ll delve into some shortly, dominates as “N.”  That “schoolmistress” analogy holds true as she educates “A” in the political process (part of N/A is a civics class) and the world at large.  We get to see “N”’s self-confidence, intelligence, understanding, and wry humor at her every turn.

It helps a good deal that Taylor has made herself look very much like Pelosi, with the assistance of Myung Hee Cho’s costume, a hot-pink skirt-suit and high-heeled pumps.  (With no specific credit given for N/A’s make-up, I presume that the costumer was responsible for that, too, as is traditional.)  As several reviewers noted, Taylor did not try to mimic Pelosi’s distinctive voice—but, then “N” isn’t “Pelosi.”

Bringing ardent sincerity to “A”’s radical objectives, Villafañe demonstrates genuine frustration at the political realities she finds in the House and the Democratic Party.  She captures “A”’s resolve, assertiveness, and rejection of compromise.  It doesn’t hurt that Villafañe, in Cho’s a black pantsuit and black flats (later heels), is virtually a double for AOC.

As long as I’ve touched on Cho’s costumes, let me say a word about her set design.  I found it underwhelming—though that may be oddly appropriate for this production: a Lucite desk, three Lucite cubes for use as seats, and, prominently up center, a five-foot Lucite case containing a gavel.  

On the desk, which is in “N”’s office, is a landline phone on which she does her cajoling and utzing.  “A,” by contrast, is tethered to her cell, on which she livestreams to her “followers” almost continuously.  That’s, of course, supposed to be emblematic of the generation gap on display here.

(One other prominent item in the set decoration is subtly significant: a small, silver bowl.  It sits on “N”’s desk and is usually full of chocolate squares, which she offers to “A” in the first scene and it becomes a leitmotif.  The squares are Ghirardelli chocolate, “N” tells “A.”  What isn’t articulated is that the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is inextricably associated with San Francisco, the heart of Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district.  If ya know, ya know.)

Rhoda Feng of Observer suggests that the scenic design “encourages the notion of a diorama on loan from a museum”—and it does.  (The gavel turns out to be the one “N” used the first time she called the House into session—and she says it will go to the Smithsonian museum “when I’m done with it.  Which I’m not!”)

Diane Paulus directs the play with sharp assurance.  Oh, some of the blocking is “stagey,” especially when Paulus has one actress speak to the other who’s behind her so that the speaker’s facing the audience, not the person she’s addressing.

The problem at which I hinted above, however, gets in the way, as N/A soon begins to seem like a string of mini-debates over the same issues.  Johnny Oleksinski compares the dialogue to “a campaign robocall” on the New York Post and Feng labels them “off-puttingly vague.”

The New York Times reviewer, Jesse Green, asserts that the playwright “is unable to keep the back-and-forth political debate from falling into a rut.”  In the play itself, “N” accuses “A” of speaking like “a metaphor shower” and “A” characterizes one of “N”’s pronouncements as “a bumper sticker.”  To my ear, both women are right.

In my view, this happens because Correa doesn’t have a catalogue of Pelosi’s and AOC’s actual statements from which to compile his dialogue.  He only has something like a punch list of topics and he ends up repeating himself—or has his characters doing so.

There’s a second problem with Correa’s portrayals of the antagonists, and it may have been generated by his personal feelings—not necessarily his political leanings—regarding the real-life characters.  His prior acquaintanceship, however glancing, with Pelosi may account for the fact that he gives “N” most of the best—that is, funniest—lines in the play.

In his Vulture/New York magazine review, Jackson McHenry points out that “giving a character laugh lines is like handing them a weapon.”  He goes on:

The playwright may intend to be evenhanded, but the humor tends to be the giveaway.  It can make someone seem smarter, wiser, more relatable, even if they’re espousing ideas you don’t agree with.

Most of the play’s humor, McHenry observes, “tilt[s] solidly in N’s favor,” rendering “A” as something of a pill.  I suspect that Correa didn’t intend to queer the pitch to “N”’s benefit—I believe he meant for us to witness equal combat—and I don’t really know that the writer was influenced by his long-ago encounters with Pelosi in Morella’s office, but the result is what it is, irrespective of the causes.

McHenry, however, seems to think that Correa leans in favor of “N”/Pelosi’s political philosophy.  Nevertheless, he says something with which I agree:

If you, like me, are more inclined to sympathize with A than with N [which I tend to, even as I recognize that her agenda is probably impossible to enact], a play that keeps insisting that better things aren’t possible gets frustrating quickly. . . .  N/A wears quickly as a drama.  It’s boring watching one generation dunk repeatedly on another for 80 minutes.

“I wanted to write about a battle of ideas,” Correa wrote in the Playbill for N/A, “the philosophical and strategic disagreements that have placed two historical figures seemingly at odds, despite shared values and objectives.”

It turns out, though, that that’s not actually what came about—and it’s probably just as well.  As the writer told the Washington Post, the play moved away from his intended focus on civics and focused more on the two women.  As Times review-writer Green observes, “[P]lays, performed by real people, can’t help but be personal too.”

I’m not sure that’s an axiom, but it happened in this instance.  The political wrangling, as I’ve asserted, gets enervating pretty quickly, especially if you listen to newscasts and talk shows.  We’ve heard it all before—especially just now, in the preliminaries to the midterms when Pelosi-like centrist candidates are facing progressive opponents in the mold of AOC. 

But as dynamic shifts from articulating politics to revealing the characters, the individualities, the actors inject humanity and draw this viewer’s attention.  Now, this doesn’t enhance the drama, but it does make for more compelling theater.  In the hands of less charismatic actors, this might not happen, but with Taylor and Villafañe, it works.

The press in 2024 was mixed, leaning more towards the “meh.”  Of the reviews I read, probably the most negative was Oleksinski’s Post notice.  His first words are: “Don’t come looking for juicy drama at ‘N/A’ . . .” and then he adds,

The behind-closed-doors scenes pitting the Speaker of the House against the upstart New York congresswoman are more like Disney’s Hall of Presidents—reverential and robotic—than brutal Capitol Hill.

The Post reviewer complains that “no moment is ever explosive.  In fact,” he continues,

“N/A” is almost a light comedy. Playwright Mario Correa turns Pelosi into a Don Rickles who delivers mean zinger after mean zinger about the then-30-year-old rep of the Bronx and Queens as if she’s working the Catskills.

“There’s no critique, really,” Oleksinski writes, “or insight into these famous women beyond what we already know,” summing up with, “It’s a whole lotta duh.”  His appraisal of the performances is, “Taylor and Villafañe are ideally cast in less-than-ideal circumstances.”

In the Times, Green declares,

The play’s ideas and ideals are fine, and modestly if repetitively dramatized, but what makes this swift summer trifle so diverting is the embodiment of the women themselves.  N and A are perfect incarnations of their congressional doppelgängers . . . .

He praises both actors.

The Timesman, however, points out that “the conflict that Correa means to foreground as political keeps falling out of its frame,” explaining, “However policy-oriented the relationship was in Washington, onstage it becomes personal despite the playwright’s intentions.”

Green complains that “Correa is unable to keep the back-and-forth political debate from falling into a rut.” As an example, he notes that “N”’s notion of the chain in which every fight leads to the next (Green called this the “ouroboros,” which I thought was kinda clever) “gets tiring fast, or would, had the actors not long since taken over the play’s agenda.”   

In the Wall Street Journal, Isherwood opens with a quip: “Given the existential despair in which most Democrats are swimming—or drowning—an evening at ‘N/A’ . . . will almost qualify as comfort food, or a weighted blanket soothing the nerves.”

“Mr. Correa's writing,” Isherwood writes, “is sharp and smart, convincing in its understanding of the characters as we know them, and often refreshingly funny.”  Diane Paulus, the WSJ reviewer attests, directed the play “with crisp authority.”

Isherwood, too, praises both actors.  Taylor delivers her lines “with a delicacy that nevertheless keeps their acerbic veneer firmly polished,” he reports, and Villafañe “does not shy from portraying Alexandria as, at times, stubborn and high-handed.”

He concludes that “[e]ven at just 80 minutes, ‘N/A’ can feel like a series of debates circling around the same subjects . . . .  Nevertheless, even if it does resemble a debate without moderators, as such things go it passes like a refreshing breeze . . . .”

On Vulture, McHenry, noting that the play’s described as “a battle of wills—and wits,” protests that “[t]he wits, and most of the play’s will, tilt solidly in N’s favor.”  He adds that “N/A . . . is like being stuck at dinner with a relative you wish would please talk about anything else (do N and A have any thoughts on the weather?).  It’s claustrophobic, and ultimately boring . . . .”

“[T]he structure traps the performers in limited caricatures,” McHenry asserts.  Taylor “specializes in playing toughened older women” and “applies all her steel to N, throwing out one-liners with hefty torque . . . .”  In contrast, “Villafañe’s done musicals . . . and her angle on A turns the congresswoman into something of a flustered theater kid.”

On TheaterMania, Zachary Stewart capsulizes N/A, which he labels “this 80-minute political hagiography,” thus:

If you’re looking for a comedy that flatters the sensibilities of Boomer liberals without ever rudely suggesting that they might bear some responsibility for the overwrought state of our politics, this is your ticket.

Of the actors, Stewart says,

Villafañe is the more convincing mimic of the two, perfectly capturing AOC’s pitch and cadence.  She does a fine job completing the task set out by Correa’s script, which is to set up the pins for Taylor to knock down.

He switches sports references and remarks that Villafañe “throw[s] softballs to her comedy partner,” so he can quip that “Taylor easily knocks them out of the park.”  Of Taylor’s “N,” the TheaterMania review-writer proclaims, “She’s less Nancy Pelosi than she is Lady Bracknell with a gavel.  She dispenses salty morsels of wisdom . . . .”

“Diane Paulus helms the production with a steady hand and on a relatively slim design budget,” writes Stewart.  “Myung Hee Cho’s set of transparent office furniture on dull carpet suggests a popup Thai restaurant . . . .”

The reviewer’s final assessment is that

N/A succeeds as a light summer comedy for the vote-blue-no-matter-who set.  But if you’re looking for reassurances that liberals young and old have . . . learned any valuable lessons that will keep Donald Trump out of the White House, I’m afraid they’re not available.

Russo of New York Theatre Guide finds that

Correa's approach to N/A . . . feels like that of a politician's speechwriter.  The task is to carefully curate an image of his subjects that's commanding and true—perhaps with the occasional imperfection or vulnerability so as to be human, but making sure they're someone you can root for.

“Correa deftly advances his goal with spirited, entertaining writing,” says Russo.  “A few lines sound like they truly were written for a speech . . ., but he makes up for them with a stream of zingers.”  She continues, “It seems more likely to reinforce people's existing alliances than encourage them to really consider other perspectives.  The play feels tailor-made, and -timed, for one express purpose: Get out the vote.”

Observer’s Feng slams N/A, the latest on a spate of plays “with shortened character names” as the least surprising, most anemic of the bunch.”  She adds that “N/A is about as suspenseful as an electoral abecedarium.”

“Part of the problem has to do with déjà vu.” Feng explains.  Correa . . . sticks closely to the facts (so many facts!), delivering dutiful capsule summaries of the women’s backgrounds and hobbyhorses with the efficiency and spontaneity of a teleprompter . . . .”  “N/A,” declares the Observer writer, “suffers from . . . information overload.  The welter of information is funneled through exposition-heavy dialogue and needlepoint-ready slogans.”

On This Week in New York, Mark Rifkin dubs  N/A “potent.”  He pronounces Pelosi as “splendidly portrayed by Taylor,” and AOC as “fully embodied by Ana Villafañe.”  (Reporting that after he got home, he watched “the debacle of a debate” between the 2024 presidential candidates . . . he wisecracked that he “decided to cast my vote for Taylor.”)

Rifkin designates Correa’s script as “well-written” and finds it “astutely directed by Tony winner Diane Paulus . . . .”  “Cho’s costumes capture the characters to a T,” the reviewer states. 

“Taylor shines as Pelosi,” declares Rifkin; “it’s as if she has a glow as she tries to educate the younger congresswoman in the ways of politics, and the world itself.  She exhibits Pelosi’s confidence, intelligence, and understanding of the tactics of negotiation in her every movement.”

“Villafañe . . .,” reports the TWINY reviewer, “more than holds her own with Taylor, capturing her character’s determination, aggressiveness, and refusal to compromise.”

Samuel L. Leiter on Theater Life acknowledges that while N/A “breaks no ground dramaturgically, it does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to imagine a series of encounters . . . between the politicians.”  He adds that “Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe are ideally cast, . . . making it easy to imagine that what we’re witnessing approximates reality.”

Leiter points out that “Correa gives both women enough personal detail to make them believable simulacra of the real-life people they represent.”  He adds. “Both performers are excellent and not only because of how closely they resemble their famous counterparts.”

“Villafañe . . . brings fiery conviction to A’s radical aspirations, along with sincere frustration at the political realities she must deal with,” finds Leiter.  “As so often in the past,” he says of Taylor, “I was impressed by how she can turn on a dime from emotion to emotion, or put a spin on three or four words to conjure a big laugh out of them.”

Director Paulus “elicits sharply edged performances,” finds Leiter, “but her staging . . . can be a bit clunky, with blocking seemingly motivated more by a need to get the actors moving than from organic motives; too often, the actors seem to be playing to the audience [rather] than to each other” (as I noted myself).

“As represented by the conflict between the steady, if ploddingly incremental, bridge-building practices of someone like Nancy Pelosi,” Leiter sums up, “and the angry, outspoken, bridge-burning tactics of someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the result is a drama that not only has educational value but strikes enough dramatic sparks to light up the stage.”

In N/A’s “fly-on-the-wall view of the pairing of and occasional headbutting between longtime congressional superstar "N" (as in Nancy Pelosi) and blazing newcomer "A" (as in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez),” says Howard Miller on Talkin’ Broadway,

[t]he sense of authenticity is aided to a prodigious degree by whip-cracking, razor-sharp performances by Holland Taylor as N, delivering both calm self-assuredness and subtle sarcasm with pitch-perfect timing, and Ana Villafañe as A, offering scorching indictments of "the system" with the fervency of an evangelical Fury.

In the end, Miller believes, “even though audience members are unlikely to be surprised by the stances of each of the two, it is the personalities and the beautifully crafted and performed interplay between them that makes N/A such a pleasure to watch.”

On Lighting & Sound America, David Barbour spent most of his notice describing the contents of N/A—and much of that writing about Holland Taylor’s “N”—instead of evaluating it.  He did finally make some critical comments, however:

[Director Paulus] keeps the conversation on a constant simmer and Taylor always has a zinger on hand when things start to get too much like the Sunday morning talk shows.  [Myung Hee] Cho's spare set design is a fine canvas for the projections by POSSIBLE and Lisa Renkel . . . .

Since we're clearly in for a wild political summer—I write this on the morning after the first presidential debate, as panic grips Democrats across the land—some, looking for theatrical escape, may find N/A to be a little too much like a ninety-minute session with Politico or The Hill.  But Correa is asking questions that should concern us all and Taylor is a show all by herself.  Democracy may be in crisis but at least we can laugh about it.

“Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe are perfectly cast in this intelligent and illuminating comedy . . .,” reports Jonathan Mandell in his opening sentence on New York Theater.  “Opening on the night of an unprecedented debate between a President and a former President,” he adds, “the play is itself something of a debate over issues, strategies and priorities that directly apply to the state of the nation now.”

“At the same time, ‘N/A’ aims to entertain.”

Mandell finds that Correa achieves the goal he wrote about in the program (quoted above), “with N and A exchanging views on issues like health care, climate change, and immigration, but ultimately arguing over the best way to effect change.”

The review-writer cavils slightly, saying, “If “N/A” offers little of [Saturday Night Live’s] brand of satiric silliness, the play is threaded with a comic looseness.”  Mandell adds,

Both Congresswomen are undeniably sharp, but it seems unlikely that the real Pelosi and AOC engage in such witty banter, which in my experience is rare to encounter outside a TV show.  Coincidentally or not, much of the production’s design recalls a TV studio, at least a political one, with a barebones set and computer graphics of colorful stars with a “whoosh” sound in between scenes.  

He backs off slightly, acknowledging that “it’s hard to object to the laugh lines in the play, which temper—and are tempered by – the serious discussions . . . .”

It doesn’t hurt that both Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe are able to deliver the comedy without compromising their credible portrayal of these actual women . . . .

In the end, Mandell has reservations:

“N/A” may not be a political play for the ages.  As the playwright himself acknowledges, it’s only “lightly imagined.”  It doesn’t quite go anywhere.  The ending feels almost arbitrary; nothing is really resolved.  But isn’t that exactly where we are right now?

Darryl Reilly of Theater Scene, dubs N/A a “witty and absorbing two-character fantasia” and says “it believably imagines Pelosi’s contentious relationship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Generational and ideological clashes abound.” 

Reilly describes the play as “a lively 75-minute battle of opposing wills amidst the passing scene” and reports that “Diane Paulus’s snappy physical staging achieves visual verisimilitude” while “Myung Hee Cho’s spare Lucite-themed scenic design perfectly represents power offices with a museum-style dimension, and her luxurious costume design authentically duplicates Pelosi’s regal red skirt suit and Ocasio-Cortez’s stylish black ensemble.”

He writes that “N/A is a strongly performed and stimulating entertainment” with Taylor delivering “a grand performance using her own distinctive honeyed vocal cadences, rather than attempting a Pelosi impression,” while “Villafañe’s charisma, sleek physicality and animation, accurately capture Ocasio-Cortez’s persona; youthful idealism is movingly articulated.”  Reilly concludes that “Ms. Villafañe’s and Taylor’s marvelous histrionic teamwork puts N/A over as a thoughtful take on contemporary American politics.”

Remarking on Correa’s program note that N/A was “heavily researched and lightly imagined,” Culture Sauce’s Thom Geier laments, “Would that it had been more deeply researched or even more imaginatively executed.  As it stands, the show clearly tips the balance toward the octogenarian in this battle of the wills . . . ,”

Geier expresses misgivings about the playwriting, objecting,

There’s a superficiality to the portrayals here, one that seems to be borne of Wikipedia bios, quotes from speeches and interviews, and yes, even, social media posts.  Despite Diane Paulus’s crisp direction, the characters too often seem like animatronic figures from Disney’s Hall of Presidents rather than flesh-and-blood people. 

On Off Off Online, Colin Macdonald declares that “Mario Correa’s N/A . . . is downright enjoyable, with sharp, quippy, idea-laden writing that can feel as though plucked from The West Wing . . . .”  “One doesn’t need to be a political junkie to appreciate N/A,” Macdonald advises, “as its ideas and conflicts are laid out clearly, though there are some Easter eggs for overconsumers of political news . . . .”

The OOO reviewer continues,

Diane Paulus’s precise direction avoids the stasis that can sometimes afflict two-handers: the way the actors sit, orbit one another, and where they stand all seem to symbolize their power struggle—no movement feels slack or accidental.

“A strength of Correa’s writing is the ability to locate humor amid the debates,” finds Macdonald, although “[t]here are moments when the play’s debates feel repetitive . . . .”  The review-writer concludes, “The tug-of-war is engrossing, funny, and ultimately moving, with two fine-tuned performances that evoke the namesake characters but are not crude impressions.”

Journalists Are Under Strain

 

[As I avowed in my last post on Rick On Theater, “Woke Art Labeled ‘Aesthetically Terrifying’“ (30 August 2026), I’m virtually a First Amendment absolutist.  I entirely believe in a free press, unfettered, uncensored, unimpeded.  In support of that position, I’m republishing the article below, “Real Life In Real Time,” a collection of short reports by actual journalists in the field about some of the difficulties they’re facing in these uncertain times. 

[The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union that represents film and television actors, journalists, radio personalities, recording artists, singers, voice actors, and other media professionals worldwide, which publishes the magazine SAG-AFTRA, from which this article is drawn, is dominated by actors.  It was formed by a merger in 2012 of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

[All of SAG’s membership and most of AFTRA’s were actors, so the magazine’s coverage is also most often about actors and their concerns (such as AI and intimacy coordinators), even after the merger made on-air journalists and spokespeople our brothers and sisters.  The image of the union (and therefore the magazine—which used to be called Screen Actor) is inevitably actors in movies, TV, radio, and other media. 

[“Real Life In Real Time” stood out for me because it wasn’t about actors or acting, since the journalists are our colleagues—and in jeopardy.  (The union may be dominated by the actor-members, but we’re not spotlighted in the Constitution.  The journalists are.  They’re there explicitly; were only there implicitly!)

[Let’s also not forget that while the news may report on theater-movies-TV/radio, theater-movies-TV/radio is often drawn from the news (like Good Night, and Good Luck and All the President’s Men—and even the comedies like The Front Page).

[There is a long history of artists, including theater and film artists, lending their skills and power in defense of reporters’, anchors’, and editors’ freedom to do their work and to assure their safety while doing it.  In 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee began its witch-hunts, Hollywood icons Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, and Gene Kelly formed the Committee for the First Amendment.  HUAC didn’t just target Hollywood screenwriters—it threatened the editorial independence of newsrooms and journalists nationwide.

[The Hollywood stars famously flew to Washington, D.C., to protest the hearings, acting as an elite shield of artistic prestige to defend the broader, fundamental right of journalists and citizens to speak and report without government persecution.

[Before All the President’s Men (1976) was a classic film, Robert Redford made a personal mission of the defense of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting.  Redford bought the film rights to the story before the Watergate investigation was even finished or universally validated.

[At a time when the Richard Nixon administration (1969-74) was actively trying to discredit and legally crush the Washington Post, Redford used his massive Hollywood capital to legitimize, fund, and protect the narrative of investigative journalism.  He consciously used his status as an artist to build a cultural fortress around the integrity of the free press.

[As a fierce defender of free speech, former president of PEN International, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, for PEN and the Helsinki Watch Committee in 1985 alongside fellow playwright (and future Nobel Laureate) Harold Pinter to investigate allegations of the military junta’s torture and persecution of writers, journalists, and political dissidents.

[The two writers held a defiant press conference at the Turkish Journalists Association headquarters which the Turkish government had authorized.  Immediately after the meeting, however, the authorities prohibited the press to report it.  Learning later that a military warrant had been issued for their arrest in Istanbul, the two dramatists rushed to the airport and flew out precipitously.

[In 1997, the Creative Coalition, an advocacy group that encourages increased support of the arts and other causes, established the Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award, given regularly to prominent figures, including journalists, who fight against censorship and defend human expression. Reeve had taken a high-profile international stand for free expression in Santiago, Chile, in 1987 at the height of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

[It’s the cross-over that makes this coverage significant to me: artists standing in defense of reporters, rather than artists standing for other artists.  The amalgamation of SAG and AFTRA has concretized a symbiotic relationship that has always existed.  Protecting the truth-tellers is the only way to protect the storytellers.  It’s just like Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came” (see “Manifesto” in “Helen Katz Kaye Eleasari (1934-2020)“ [22 April 2022]).    

[That famous poem perfectly captures the danger of a fragmented creative community failing to see that if we don’t speak out when there’s an attack on the press, when there’s an attack on the arts, there may be no one left to speak out!]

“A LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT”
by Linda Powell

[Below is a message-cum-editorial by the Executive Vice President of SAG-AFTRA.  Published in the Spring 2026 issue (Volume 15, Number 2) of SAG-AFTRA, the union’s membership publication, it serves as a preface to the article that follows.  (Both Powell’s letter and the article, “Real Life In Real Time,” are posted in the online edition of Spring 2026.)]

“Journalists are under strain — facing regulatory uncertainty, disrespect and shrinking newsroom resources.”

Dear Member,

I’ve sat down to write this magazine letter more than once and walked away from it. Not for lack of an idea or a point of view. I know exactly the challenge I want to explore. The obstacle is that I don’t have a solution to offer. The obstacle is the obstacles.

Our world is in transition. Transitioning to who or what and when is a mystery. I spend a lot of time representing members in rooms where the dizzying changes brought on by technology, by corporate consolidation, by the fragmentation of our media sources and by the shifting political landscape are the focus of conversation. That’s true both within our union and among the wider family of labor where SAG-AFTRA gathers with siblings around the country — and around the world. These issues are universal, and while individual challenges differ, the threats are the same: threats to our wages, to our working conditions, to our benefits, to our stability, to our jobs and to unions themselves.

I am going to date myself with this: I am a radio listener. Sometimes it’s streamed (I’m not that old), but radio — especially morning radio — is my jam. Which is why, recently, when Paramount Skydance made the decision to shut down CBS News Radio, I was taken aback. [Paramount Skydance is the multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that owns, among other properties, Paramount Motion Picture Group and CBS Entertainment Group.]

CBS News Radio has been a standard bearer for nearly a century. It was the home of Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] — a legendary broadcaster who exemplified journalism grounded in verification, independence and public trust.

Change is the only constant, yes. I don’t expect the radio of my grandparents to exist forever. Businesses will adjust and changes will be inevitable. As distribution evolves, audiences shift. I know all too well that the members facing layoffs at CBS are not alone. Our broadcasters have become all too familiar with this pattern. We often talk about the importance of belonging to a union in terms of wages and working conditions and benefits. Just as important are the advocacy and protections that come into play when work is abruptly terminated.

But what we are witnessing goes beyond job loss. It reaches the core of how information is produced and received.

Journalists are under strain — facing regulatory uncertainty, disrespect and shrinking newsroom resources. Meanwhile, algorithms in our “news feeds” reward speed, volume and reaction over verification. In that environment, credibility becomes harder to build and easier to erode. And truth becomes hard to agree on.

Corporations once prided themselves on their news divisions. Profit was not ignored, but it was not driven at the expense of product. Today, headlines often bear no relationship to the story below the fold. In our social media environment, the news I’m seeing often bears no relationship to the news that you are seeing. Outrage bait increasingly drives our cultural conversations.

The broadcasters I stand next to have not changed; they are mission-driven and committed to hold power to account and serve the public with verified reporting. But the headwinds they face are growing stronger.

Circling back to where I started — I don’t have the answers to these obstacles. But I do know that, in this moment, supporting broadcast journalists with strong contracts, advocacy, resources and funding is not only crucial to our strength as a union, it is crucial to the health of our democracy.

In solidarity,

/s/ Linda Powell

[Linda Powell is the current Executive Vice President of SAG-AFTRA and also serves as a trustee of the SAG-AFTRA Health and SAG Pension plans.  She’s a New York-based actress who’s appeared on Broadway and off and has been seen on screen in such shows as Dopesick (miniseries; Disney+. 2021), House of Cards (TV series; Netflix, 2013-18), Chicago Fire (TV Series; NBC, 2012-present), Madam Secretary (CBS; TV series; 2014-19), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (TV series; NBC, 1999-present), and films including The Report (Amazon Studios, 2019), I Think I Love My Wife (Fox Searchlight, 2007), and American Gangster (Universal, 2007). 

[Powell’s a proud member of Actors Equity Association and most recently enjoyed a long run as Neil Diamond’s therapist in the Broadway bio-musical A Beautiful Noise (Broadhurst Theatre, 2022-23).  

[She was a Vice Chair of the negotiating committee for SAG-AFTRA’s recently ratified TV/Theatrical contract and is Chair of the board of advisors for the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York.  (Linda Powell is the daughter of Alma and Colin Powell, the former United States National Security Advisor [1987-89], Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [1989-93], and Secretary of State [2001-05].)]

*  *  *  *
“REAL LIFE IN REAL TIME”

[Like the letter from Linda Powell posted above, the article below is from SAG-AFTRA Volume 15, Number 2 (Spring 2026).]

SAG-AFTRA BROADCASTERS PRIORITIZE SAFETY IN THE FIELD

Reporting the news doesn’t come without its obstacles. For SAG-AFTRA broadcasters who find themselves in the field reporting breaking stories live, getting the right angle or an eyewitness’s interview brings a level of personal risk — particularly during and these perilous times. 

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a database established in 2017 to collect and analyze incidents in the field, reported January and February had the highest number of press freedom violations for the first two months of any year. Equipment searches and detainment by law enforcement, as well as physical assaults, are some of the tense situations news reporters experience. But other situations, such as natural disasters or standoffs involving law enforcement, can expose reporters to dangers to life and limb.

Truth-telling requires persevering in adverse circumstances. Today’s increasingly tense and volatile social and political climate has made broadcast reporting in the United States a more dangerous job than perhaps it has ever been. Here are accounts from five SAG-AFTRA broadcasters of how they stay safe — physically and mentally — so they can continue the important work of informing the public.

ALWAYS STAY READY
Anar Virji, Field Producer for Al Jazeera English 

“When I think of safety, I think about what that means for all of us working together. I encourage colleagues to speak up if they have a concern, and I plan as much as I can before we go out. That means advocating for safety and first aid training at work, and then using that to organize before you go on assignment.

“Things that I keep in my travel gear include a medical kit, a headlamp in case we lose electricity, and backup batteries to charge electronics. Then I try to think site-specific: Are we going into protests? Is it a hurricane or other weather event? What sort of access will we have to food, water and bathrooms? Will we have cellphone service? These answers come from [having] experience, talking to colleagues and speaking to people in the area.

“For protests, I’ve found that gas masks are incredibly useful safety gear. I also pack an extra foldable duffle bag to put my clothes in if I’m tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed.

“For feature stories I’ve produced, I’ve traveled to Native Alaskan and Native American villages without hotels and have slept in a school or camped. In those situations, we were also without regular cellphone service, which meant speaking with editors about when we expected to be back in range, something also essential in natural disasters.

“My strategy is always to think long-term and collectively about safety. That makes it easier, rather than thinking of it only when stories [are unfolding].”

BRINGING IN THE CAVALRY
Chip Mitchell, Reporter for WBEZ Chicago 

“I’ve had my share of hazardous reporting assignments over the years. I’ve traveled along rural Colombian highways when kidnapping for ransom was a threat. I’ve been up close to NATO summit protesters clashing with police in downtown Chicago, and on the South Side, I had reported on the city’s first widespread looting and gun violence after George Floyd’s killing [25 May 2020].

“Then, one Friday evening last September, my bosses sent me to an ICE processing facility, just west of Chicago, as President Trump’s deportation blitz was hitting high gear. A couple hundred protesters were chanting and jeering at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents. I saw feds responding with pepper balls, tear gas, chemical sprays and stun grenades. ‘Stinger’ [a tactical, “less-lethal” crowd-control weapon explicitly designed to explode and spray dozens of small rubber projectiles] detonations showered the crowd with rubber pellets.

“My employer, a nonprofit that owns a public radio station and major newspaper, was starting to outfit its reporters and photographers with gas masks, goggles, helmets, vests, decontamination wipes and so on. I had what I needed that night. I knew [when] to step back and avoid getting caught between the protesters and agents.

“But I faced a safety challenge the equipment and positioning could not address. Once the agents started using the riot-control weapons, the event became big news. I was expected to supply reports to the radio station, its national network, the newspaper, two websites and a live blog. That would be challenging under the best of circumstances, but especially on a night when [there weren’t] many editors on duty. So, I didn’t get much help prioritizing the news outlets and deadlines — not to mention making decisions about sourcing and safety risks.

“I had to spend a lot of time thumbing around on my phone, trying to rustle up off-duty editors and begging for coordination. The phone work required looking down at the device when I should have been looking up and devoting my full attention to things like protester arrests and teargas canisters.

“I didn’t get hurt. Over the next few days, though, I let newsroom managers know they had dropped the ball on editor staffing that night, that it hurt our coverage and that it could have jeopardized my safety.

“One thing I appreciated was having a union. We had organized a SAG-AFTRA unit at the radio station a decade earlier. During those conversations with bosses, I knew that the union would have my back if I needed it. That support strengthened my confidence to communicate clearly with management.”

[WBEZ is a non-commercial educational radio station in Chicago.  It’s the National Public Radio news outlet in the city.]

SAFETY IS MORE THAN A WORD
Frankie McLister, Reporter for WCCO-TV, CBS News Minnesota

“‘Safety is the No. 1 priority’ sounds quite cliché — but to me, it’s cliché for a reason. As a reporter in Minneapolis, I’ve been tested to keep this phrase at the forefront of my mind, especially throughout our coverage of Operation Metro Surge, the nearly two-month-long surge of 3,000 federal agents to the state [4 December 2025-12 February 2026].

“At all times, I have the proper gear. This includes pepper spray in every bag I keep handy, in the side compartment of my vehicle and, sometimes, right in my pocket during a live shot. Additionally, I often find myself communicating with my photojournalist and security guard (if one is provided — though in general, we’ve had a lot of security assistance during large-scale news events). I tell them I’m watching their backs, and this prompts them to keep safety at the forefront and reinforces that I view [the work] as a team effort.

“When I say I’m always watching — I’m truly always watching. And I think it’s important to communicate that. My badge is on hand, and I’m also mindful of what I’m wearing and where I’m wearing it. For example, if I’m in a part of town with a higher crime rate, I might choose not to wear my shiny watch.

“Once you keep the lines of communication open and make safety your first priority, it becomes natural. My goggles were already around my neck while covering several events involving tear gas — and that’s when I knew it was no longer a second thought, just like a seatbelt in the car.”

TEAMWORK REMAINS WHEN TRAGEDY ENDS
Annie Rose Ramos, General Assignment Reporter for KTLA 5 News

“In Los Angeles, SAG-AFTRA members at KTLA [television station in Los Angeles, California] have partnered with station management to address field safety concerns during contract negotiations with Nexstar [multimedia conglomerate founded in 1996, the largest television broadcasting company in the United States, owning 265 television stations]. In the aftermath of the devastating wildfires in 2025 [7-31 January] . . . conditions were unpredictable in the field.

“For days, the ground was still smouldering [sic; British spelling]. In the weeks [afterward], the air was difficult to breathe. For months, toxic debris lay on the ground. As field teams, we wanted to ensure we were being mindful of the health impacts, working with our station to create kits that included hazmat suits, goggles, masks and water.

“We continued to remain proactive when it concerned the hazardous area so many neighborhoods had become in the wake of the wildfires. Backyards had broken branches. Power lines were down and snaked along the streets. Electric car batteries were melted into the ashes and rubble. It was about watching where you walked, where you turned, what you touched. Managers at our station knew that, too. They kept a watchful eye, and if we didn’t see something that could pose a risk, they did — they called us and advised us to move locations. It was about teamwork, and continues to be, to ensure safety.”

CLARITY, DOCUMENTATION AND DISCIPLINE
JJ Green, National Security Correspondent for WTOP

“Disinformation is not abstract. It is kinetic.

“In heated political seasons, lies do not simply distort facts, they weaponize audiences. When a journalist is falsely labeled a traitor, partisan operative, foreign agent or enemy of the people, that narrative does not stay online. It migrates. It hardens. It radicalizes. And eventually, it can show up in a parking lot, outside a home or at a crowded public event.

“We have seen the progression. Smear campaigns escalate into coordinated harassment. Harassment metastasizes into doxxing [publishing the private personal information of someone or revealing the identity of an online poster without the consent of that individual; also doxing]. Doxxing produces stalking. And stalking can become violence. The risk matrix for journalists now includes physical surveillance, targeted intimidation, online swatting [causing a SWAT team (from Special Weapons and Tactics, a military-like unit within U.S. police forces) to be deployed on an unsuspecting victim, especially a public figure or someone prominent on social media by falsifying a threat, often as a punishment or retaliation] attempts and threats amplified by algorithmic outrage cycles. Disinformation collapses the distinction between rhetoric and action.

“For national security reporters, especially those covering intelligence, war, extremism or political corruption, the danger compounds. False narratives are designed to delegitimize professional reporting. They seek to isolate the journalist from the public, to frame truth-telling as treachery, and to create a permissive environment for intimidation.

“The first countermeasure is narrowing the firehose [the massive, relentless, and overwhelming flood of false information and online provocations used by manipulators], refusing to react to every provocation and denying manipulators oxygen. The second is discipline and documentation, maintaining rigorous transparency in reporting to inoculate against narrative distortion. The third is threat awareness, monitoring online chatter patterns, recognizing coordinated amplification and understanding when rhetoric crosses into credible risk. Finally, resilience, both psychological and procedural. Calm is a defensive tool. Emotional reactivity is an exploitable vulnerability.

“Disinformation thrives on fear, anger and spectacle. My defense is clarity, documentation and discipline.

“Because in a season where lies travel faster than light, survival, professional and physical, depends on refusing to let them control the battlefield.”

[WTOP is an all-news radio station in Washington, D.C.]

MAKING CHANGE WHERE HISTORY IS TOLD
Bob Butler’s Story

Journalists have always faced challenges in the field, but safety has become a greater concern as public demonstrations became more commonplace, said SAG-AFTRA Vice President, Broadcasters, Bob Butler, a veteran reporter in radio and television. 

“I worked at KCBS Radio in San Francisco for 42 years,” said Butler, who retired in 2023. “As a reporter, I never had to worry about my personal safety until the Oscar Grant riots in 2010 [following the police shooting on 1 January 2009] and Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations in 2011 [17 September-15 November]. The most difficult times are during protests and demonstrations, especially when [people] start marching. The danger came mostly from being in crowds that were hit by police tear gas.”

In the field, Butler’s Golden Rule was to employ the buddy system with himself and his fellow crewmate, often a photographer, or, when working alone, to stay with other journalists in a group. In the newsroom, bringing attention to safety risks led to advocating for more safety precautions.    

“The AFTRA [nb: these events predate the 2012 SAG-AFTRA merger] local staff instituted safety briefings that included news reporter members, management, photographers, leadership from the technical unions and law enforcement. These meetings led to best practices designed to keep crews safe,” said Butler. “A couple of the steps that were taken here in San Francisco were for television stations to hire security guards for their news crew [and] purchase cameras with tracking devices.”

Still, Butler points to a need for the concern for broadcasters to be shared across the board. 

“Broadcast journalists face a number of challenges from political leaders, ambivalent managers and an increasingly skeptical electorate. Adding threats to our personal safety makes our job of providing information to keep the public informed even more difficult.”

Woke Art Labeled "Aesthetically Terrifying"

 

[I don’t often post about politics on Rick On Theater, with the exception of my advocacy for freedom of speech and expression, my support for funding the arts, and my belief in the importance of including the arts in the curricula of our elementary and secondary schools and our colleges and universities.  But now and then, something comes to my attention that offends my commitment to those positions. 

[This occurred just this week, as reported in the articles I’m reposting below.  I’m pretty sure readers will see what’s exercised me in this case.

[There are two grounds on which these reports, both covering the same event, have raised my hackles.  The first, I think is obvious in the context of my introductory comments above.  This is related to the suppression of the freedom of expression in the context of art.  I’ll circle back to this in a bit.

[The second reason this particular incident has gotten to me is probably less obvious to those who haven’t read my posts on ROT that recount my teen years when my father was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency in the Federal Republic of Germany (1962-67).

[USIA wasn’t very well known at home, so a little explanation is necessary.  Established in 1953 by President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; 34th President of the United States: 1953-61), USIA was the agency responsible for what was called “public diplomacy” (read “cultural propaganda”). 

[The agency brought art and cultural events, lectures, and political and historical information about the United States to countries all over the globe through libraries and other facilities and tours by performers and speakers.  The mission was to show the U.S. in the best possible light and emphasize our founding principles and it was part of my dad’s job to display the breadth of America’s artistic achievements—visual art, music, theater, and dance in all their forms—to the Germans in his area of responsibility. 

[Though the new Art in Embassies wasn’t a program of USIA, it was nevertheless a project that engaged my dad (who had been active with a prominent art gallery in Washington, D.C., in the years just before he arrived in Germany).

[Now, that connection to my feelings about freedom of expression. 

[I’ve said numerous times on this blog that I’m pretty much a First Amendment absolutist.  There are a few exceptions to my belief in total adherence to the principle of free speech and free expression—incitement to violence, slander or libel, falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, true national security—but not liking someone’s words, having one’s feelings hurt, or politically opposing what someone says is not among these exceptions.

[Now, I also have to acknowledge that the person or agency that owns the hall, so to speak, has some right to regulate what’s said in it.  It’s different for a public space, and that covers embassies and consulates.  But it’s obvious, I think, that the government has some legitimate entitlement to regulate what is said or displayed in its facilities.  Obscenity or vulgarity probably would fall into this category—but not political opposition, no matter what label one puts on it.

[And that’s what woke is. 

[What woke actually means in 2026 is probably irrelevant in this discussion.  The word has many connotations, depending on who’s using it, who’s hearing it, and what the topic under discussion is, but fundamentally it means being aware of and actively attentive to issues of racial, gender, and social justice.

[When used pejoratively by political conservatives, woke generally functions as a catch-all term criticizing progressive or left-wing policies, culture, and ideology.  And that’s where the problem dealt with here arises.

[Basically, it’s a label for anything the MAGA people don’t like.  That pretty much is the definition of “political opposition.”  And that’s exactly what our democratic government is not supposed to suppress.  Even if you label the ideas socialism—or, worse, communism—Americans are supposed to be allowed to speak them.

[Or draw them, sculpt them, or project them.  The First Amendment declares so.  It’s a founding principle of our Democracy.  Our powerful government isn’t supposed to erase, obliterate, cover up, suppress, censor, or delete what it doesn’t like or opposes.  The Constitution says not.  That’s the 237-year-old document whose semiquincentennial is coming up next.]

“BIG PICTURE ON POLITICS OF ‘WOKE’”
by Jason Farago 

[The report on the Trump State Department’s removal of a painting from the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was published in the New York Times on 29 August 2026 in Section C (“Arts”).  It was posted as “When Kehinde Wiley’s Painting Was Removed, It Wasn’t About Art” on the paper’s website on 27 August 2026.]

During the Cold War [1947-91], the State Department maintained a robust program of American cultural diplomacy, sending the New York Philharmonic to the Soviet Union and Duke Ellington’s orchestra to the Middle East. There is not much left of this policy, but the program [launched officially by President John F. Kennedy (1917-63); 35th President of the United States: 1961-63) in 1963; still operational], established during the Kennedy administration, manages a collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs and helps organize art displays in 190-odd embassies and consulates abroad. It is led by Erin Scavino [b. 1978; attorney, former model, reality show contestant, and political activist; Director of Art in Embassies: 2025-present], a contestant fired in Week 9 of Season 3 [2005] of “The Apprentice.” [The Apprentice ran on NBC from 2004 to 2017; Donald Trump (b. 1946; politician, media personality, and businessman; 45th President of the United States: 2017-21 and 47th President of the United States: 2025-present) was co-producer and host from 2003 to 2015.]

This month, at the American embassy in the Dominican Republic, one painting from the program was taken down with the help of a cherry picker [see following article]. It was made by the artist Kehinde Wiley [b. 1977], who painted the official presidential portrait of Barack Obama [2018; National Portrait Gallery], but who shares with President Trump a taste for gilded ornament. Scavino explained in a podcast interview that her office intervened to remove the picture.

“It was very woke,” Scavino explained. “It was by the gentleman who did Obama’s portrait. And it was aesthetically terrifying.”

Strong words for a group portrait of four fully dressed, largely expressionless sitters in front of a background adorned with flowers. But aesthetic terror is a good place to start. Whether you find the work terrifying or otherwise, the meaning of this removal lies in psychology, rather than in painting.

[A section of this article that’s included in the online edition but not included in the print version is as follows:

The removed painting is called “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960” [2015], and the sitters are four Dominican artists that Mr. Wiley met in the Caribbean country, floating as usual against a highly decorative background.

Two women are standing; they look out from the picture with authority, and their skin has a waxen photorealism.

Two men are sitting; one wears a T-shirt with the logo of an evangelical children’s camp.

Against the teal background is a repeated pattern of sunflowers, peonies and tulips, which is as flat as wallpaper in most areas . . .

[I touch on “photorealism” in visual art in my post “Hyperreal Theater” (16 January 2021).]

For 25 years, Wiley has painted in this consistent format: young figures, mostly but not always Black, posed flatly in positions nodding to western European history painting (with large portions churned out by studio assistants in China and elsewhere). This was enough for a lot of people before November 2016. As the critic Rachel Hunter Himes persuasively argued last year, Wiley’s art became “a kind of court style for the Obama era,” and his one-by-one insertions of Black sitters in royal or imperial frames, not to mention his gift for business and taste for luxury, perfectly fulfilled that era’s individualist mandate.

Wiley’s rise from queer downtown New York to the State Department, Himes went on, “dovetailed with the emergence of a political culture that saw the presence of black faces in the halls of power as inherently progressive and black economic advancement under capitalism as anti-racist.”

Wiley’s formulaic glorifications were emblematic of the lapsed age now called “Woke 1,” though I do not think that Scavino — the wife of Dan Scavino [b. 1976], the president’s deputy chief of staff — is objecting on quite those grounds. But that is the bitter irony here: If she could look past the Black president whose administration commissioned the painting (and accept the Black models in the picture, too), Ms. Scavino might see that Wiley’s “aesthetically terrifying” painting could hang more naturally in the current Oval Office or the future White House ballroom.

The artist and the commander in chief have quite a bit in common, after all. Both love ostentation, glitter and flamboyance, and Wiley’s use of ornate, even vulgar, gold frames jibes rather well with Trump’s Mar-a-Lagofication of the West Wing. Both employ a populist rhetoric that in fact serves their own celebrity, access to elite institutions and personal enrichment.

Wiley and the president have also both faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct; both have denied wrongdoing and claimed their accusers are motivated by money and fame. (Trump was found liable in federal court for sexual abuse in 2023; Wiley has not been found liable for any sexual assault, but at least three museums, in Florida, Minnesota, and Nebraska, decided not to go ahead with exhibitions of the artist after the accusations emerged.)

Look: There’s nothing inherently sinister about swapping the art in an official building. Administrations come and go, their ambassadors arrive in Canberra or Copenhagen, and they redecorate. No doubt when Obama and Joe Biden were in office, their foreign plenipotentiaries unhooked a few pictures by their Bush- or Trump-appointed predecessors and shipped them back to Foggy Bottom.

What is different with this administration, in art as in life, is the vengeance. Before, a difference in cultural politics would play out with some Bubble Wrap and spackling paste. Under this administration, culture war is waged publicly, optimized for the short-form vertical video. Our ambassador in the Dominican Republic decided to showcase the removal of Wiley’s picture with Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” playing in the background and punctuated the caption with an American flag emoji.

It is not enough to dislike Wiley’s painting; one must shame Wiley the painter. He is the second of the Obama portraitists to come under direct fire from the Trump administration; Amy Sherald [b. 1973], who painted Michelle Obama [2018; National Portrait Gallery], canceled her own exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington [Amy Sherald: American Sublime was scheduled from 19 September 2025-22 February 2026; Sherald canceled it on 24 July 2025] rather than accede to demands to censor (or “contextualize”) a supposedly objectionable work [Trans Forming Liberty (2024); depiction of a Black transgender woman as the Statue of Liberty]. In both cases, the matter at hand is not the painters’ quality or even their political stances, but the need — the pleasure — of functionaries as low down on the organization chart as the Santo Domingo political division to demonstrate loyalty to the president through carnivalesque acts of censorship and humiliation.

But what if your enemy resembles you in ways you cannot admit? That is the real aesthetic terror that this Obamaist kitsch triggers in the halls of the administration: that what you say you want to eradicate (if you ever looked at it at all) is the equal and opposite thing that defines you.

[Jason Farago, a critic at large for the New York Times, writes about art and culture in the U.S. and abroad.  He began writing for the Times in 2015, reviewing exhibitions and reporting features across the United States and in more than a dozen foreign countries.

[Previously, Farago wrote for The Guardian, and was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, the BBC, NPR, the New York Review of Books and Artforum.  He edited a global culture magazine called Even, whose four-year run is collected in the anthology “Out of Practice.”

[In 2017, Farago was named one of the inaugural laureates of the Rabkin Prize for arts writing.  In 2022, he was awarded one of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes for criticism and journalism, and in 2023 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.]

*  *  *  *
“OFFICIALS CALL PAINTING ‘WOKE’ AND WANT TO GET RID OF IT”
by Zachary Small 

[Just before the publication of the above article, the report below ran in the New York Times of 26 August 2026 (Section C: “Arts”).  It was also posted on the website as “Trump Officials Propose Sale of ‘Woke’ Painting by Kehinde Wiley” on 24 August 2026.]

The State Department wants to sell a painting by the celebrated artist Kehinde Wiley that the director of its Art in Embassies program called “very woke” and “aesthetically terrifying.” It was removed from the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic last week.

The painting by Wiley, who rose to fame after being selected to create President Barack Obama’s official portrait, features four Dominican models against a floral backdrop. It was commissioned by the federal government in 2013 and paid for with taxpayer dollars.

State Department officials removed the painting from the embassy last week, after first hiding it behind a tarp designed with an image of the American flag.

Erin Scavino, the director of Art in Embassies, criticized Wiley’s painting in a recent podcast interview and pointed out the artist’s connection to Obama. Leah Campos [b. 1977; former intelligence officer serving in the Central Intelligence Agency, 2001-12], the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic [2025-present], celebrated its removal on social media with a video playing the rock anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” writing that the painting was an example of “globalist and woke ideologies.”

Neither elaborated on what she found objectionable.

In a statement on Monday about the removal of the painting, a State Department spokeswoman did not directly address the artwork. The statement instead criticized comments Wiley had made in 2023 about his “Judith and Holofernes” painting, which he described as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.” It also cited accusations of sexual assault that Wiley has denied.

[Judith and Holofernes (2012) is Wiley’s modern take on a 17th-century painting (Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1608) by Giovanni Baglione (Italian; 1566-1643). The biblical story of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith (Book of Judith, Chapter 13, verses 1-10) has been depicted in paintings and sculptures throughout history.]

“The work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department,” the spokeswoman said.

The statement said the State Department is determining whether it can legally sell the painting of Dominicans, which is titled “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960.”

“If that is feasible,” the spokeswoman said, “it would be the goal of Art in Embassies to proudly do so.”

A smaller painting by the artist sold at a Phillips auction in 2024 for nearly $845,000. Wiley and his gallerist, Sean Kelly, did not respond to requests for comment.

Virginia Shore, who commissioned the Wiley painting, established many of the embassy art collections as director of acquisitions and chief curator for the Art in Embassies program between 2000 and 2017. She described the work as nonpartisan and said there was no precedent for selling embassy artworks.

“Calling this woke is difficult for me to understand,” she said. “This is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders.”

Wiley received an award from the State Department in 2015 [Department of State Medal of Arts by Secretary of State John Kerry (b. 1943; 68th U. S. Secretary of State: 2013-17)] because of his contributions to cultural diplomacy. He often takes inspiration from historic paintings, asking contemporary Black models to pose inside his version of the compositions. For “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960,” he spent two years studying paintings by the Dominican artists Celeste Woss y Gil [1890-1985] and Gilberto Hernández Ortega [1923-79; renowned Dominican modern artist on whose poses and composition in the 1960 painting Siamesas Wiley based this work], working with art students in the country to finish the scene.

The artwork’s removal was the latest attempt to politicize the State Department’s art program, which became part of the government during the Kennedy administration in 1963 to foster cultural diplomacy. The program was strengthened in 1999 under the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, which led to embassies developing their own permanent art collections.

This year, Scavino claimed to have gotten an ambassador in Bucharest, Romania, fired over “satanic baby art,” though the diplomat’s departure was reported as a planned retirement. She also selected a friend with no curatorial experience [Jenni Parido, a woman whose most recent job was owning a luxury pet food store in Tampa, Florida] to serve as the commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, bypassing normal procedures. In July, Scavino organized an exhibition in Washington that aimed to “Make Art Great Again” with nearly 70 versions of the American flag on display.

In a statement about the removed Wiley painting, Campos, the U.S. ambassador, said, “It is my intention that everything we project from U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo, including the art and décor, reflect the beauty, strength and commitment to liberty of the United States of America and its people.”

Online, she had a stronger perspective: “Under the Trump administration and my leadership, we are leaving behind globalist, ‘woke’ ideologies to embrace, instead, American patriotism and the beauty of our great country.”

She ended the sentence with an emoji of the American flag.

[Zachary Small is a New York Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics, and technology.  He started contributing to the Times in 2019 and was hired in 2023.

[Small has worked as a journalist for nearly a decade, after previously working in museums and theaters.  He spent years writing criticism for art publications until becoming an investigative reporter on stories about sexual misconduct, fraud, forgeries, and violence in cultural institutions.

[His first book, Token Supremacy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), details the frenzied collision of art and cryptocurrency.]