In Philadelphia, the public square lives in our arts spaces

As I woke up on Nov. 6, exhausted from a full day at the polls and focused on how to explain the election results to my 10-year-old, I also thought about how I’d approach my work day. Life goes on, right?

As an arts leader, even following an election with an incredibly high-profile focus on actors, directors, and musicians, I battled a sense of hopelessness. Is inviting people to gather together for a play the best way I could spend my precious hours in support of the values and dreams I have for our society? Then, Kamala Harris’s concession speech in the afternoon gave me the jolt I needed: “And we will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts, and in the public square.”

The public square, in a country built on freedom of speech and expression, lives in our arts spaces.

Here in Philadelphia, we have proven for centuries that we are a hub for new ideas, with a track record including the Declaration of Independence, the Free Library, the Philadelphia Sound, and Mural Arts. This year, our city became an EGOT town, with the Wilma Theater (Tony) joining the ranks of award-winning local artists Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Oscars), Quinta Brunson (Emmys), and Yannick Nezet-Seguin (Grammy) in national recognition.

As a city, we must continue to imagine, innovate, and convene for dialogue, self-discovery, and shared dreams. We must listen to our artists. Artists dream alongside us, contextualize our current events, critique our leadership, and represent the viewpoints of the collective us — a vast array of identities and cultures living alongside each other.

Past crises have shown me that the arts may feel nice to have at a time when we struggle to pay for groceries and many neighbors face grave concerns about their human rights. However, art is more than a mere distraction. In Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, the fictionalized taxi drivers’ union portrayed on stage had audience members shouting “strike” in the 1930s. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America brought the AIDS crisis into the public eye in the early 1990s. The Wilma carries on the legacy of echoing our audiences’ lived experiences and galvanizing them into action.

If you value active dialogue, peaceful dissension, and collective future-making — as I do — let’s get ourselves to the theater.

What appears on our stages directly reflects the daily issues of Philadelphians. Last week at The Wilma, for example, we opened The Comeuppance by Branden Jacobs Jenkins (which runs through Dec. 14). The play gathers a group of millennials for their 20th high school reunion, wondering what has happened in their adulthood, while grappling with war, fear, and death, and finding space for dancing, laughter, and connection. Earlier this year, we shared stories of the war in Ukraine, the trappings of living a charitable lifestyle among capitalist greed, and being a visionary woman forgotten to history.

What makes coming to the theater comforting and even a bit magical is that we are outside of our homes, outside of our self-selected groups of friends. At the theater, an art form built on collaboration and real-time interaction between artists and audience, we can flex our muscles by having constructive and difficult conversations with those whose opinions differ from ours. Is someone next to me laughing, and I’m confused? Perhaps I can learn from their connection to this story. Does the audience leap to their feet, and I instinctively join them to applaud and dance? During a play, we are directly in the community while processing, learning, and sharing the experience with 300 strangers.

The ideas uncovered by the play continue in conversations that take place afterward. These conversations can inform your choice in the voting booth, your support of local social justice movements, and your donations to global causes.

The interplay of these tensions is entirely the point of democratized art-making and embodies Philly’s gritty truth-telling in moments of loss (see: booing your home team) and fully embodied celebration (see: greased poles on Broad Street).

Totalitarian rulers suppress artistic expression for these very reasons. The Wilma’s own founders, Jiri and Blanka Zizka, fled Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s for freedom in the United States. Our current co-Artistic Director Yury Urnov ,as well as Director Dmitry Krymov (who led the Wilma’s 2022 production of The Cherry Orchard) are among the dozens of Russian artists unable to return home since speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Had they and their colleagues stayed, these artists would likely face similar consequences as Russian theater director Yevgeniya Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, who were both recently sentenced to six years in prison for making art critical of their government.

If you value active dialogue, peaceful dissension, and collective future-making — as I do — let’s get ourselves to the theater. Philly theater artists are here for you as we create and live alongside you, and as we all process what comes next.

Leigh Goldenberg is the managing director of the Wilma Theater at Broad and Spruce Streets, and is a board member of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. She also serves as a Democratic committeeperson in South Philadelphia’s First Ward.