As Originally Published in CultureMental on the 250th Anniversary of the Ride of Paul Rever.
“Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there's a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead.”
—Tony Kushner, Angels in America
The Revolution Has Called Places.
by Montserrat Mendez
4/18/2025
The curtain is not rising. The curtain is plummeting!
Gallows-fast, guillotine. Sure.
Collapsing like a myth under scrutiny. A nation convulses, a Constitution buckles, and in the choking dust of a crumbling scaffold, something ancient and monstrous materializes not a symbol, not a metaphor, but a boot.
Real. Heavy. Pressing.
We’ve seen it before.
It marched through Prague. It trampled Santiago. It crushed Vilnius, Tehran, Selma. It knows the choreography.
It always arrives rehearsed. And yet, as it stamps forward, it forgets something. The boot forgets the stage. The stage: a scrappy patch of floor and light where the unsayable becomes spoken, where the dead appear with notes in their pockets, where resistance isn’t theoretical; it’s embodied. A body onstage, trembling but upright, defies the erasure. It says: I’m still here. And I remember everything.
I. The Stage as a Weapon
Why do tyrants quake at the sight of a theatre marquee? Why did Franco outlaw Lorca? Why did the KGB monitor Chekhov? Because theatre is combustible. It sweats. It breathes. It talks back. A play cannot be confiscated when it's memorized in the marrow.
A performance is un-deletable when carried like contraband in the hearts of an audience.
What to do now:
Produce the seditious plays: not only the old warhorses (Brecht, Miller, Havel, Soyinka), but new scripts, born of this crisis, naming names, pointing fingers.
Untether the art: leave the temples. Stages are vulnerable; theatre must migrate to laundromats, to bus stops, to forest clearings where ghosts gather.
Practice insurrection: rehearse not for opening night but for rupture. If protest is illegal, make your blocking a riot. If gatherings are banned, whisper monologues in bars.
II. The Script as Evidence
Authoritarians do not burn books because they dislike fiction. They burn books because fiction remembers. A script is testimony. A playwright is a witness. And a rehearsal room can become an archive of the soon-to-be-forbidden.
What to do now:
Chronicle obsessively and then print it and hide it.
Use analog.
Use ink.
Use code.
Hide drafts in piano benches.
Memorize scenes like smuggled psalms.
Let the powerful damn themselves, verbatim theatre is holy work. Their speeches are soliloquies. Their lies, tragic irony. Put it on stage in some way. Present it to your audiences under a new light.
When things get bad and they will, Bury the text, literally, if need be. In time capsules. In boxes beneath the floorboards. In the memory of those who will rise again.
III. The Audience as Accomplice
No revolution was ever launched from a mezzanine seat.
The passive spectator is a symptom of the sickness. But a crowd that shouts back, that storms the stage, that tears up the program and cries “Again!” that is a movement in its embryonic form.
What to do now: Shatter the fourth wall,
violently.
Not with whimsy but with fury.
Make them complicit or make them run. Enact resistance as liturgy, end every show with action: voter registration, asylum applications, bail funds.
Curtain calls are calls to arms. Protect your own; make the house a haven. Assign medics, watchers, guardians. Make the theatre a citadel where the vulnerable come to train.
IV. The Body as a Barricade
When language is shackled, the body speaks prophecy. When words are outlawed, gesture becomes gospel. The body onstage, trembling, bleeding, refusing to kneel is the first barricade.
What to do now:
Choreograph rebellion: dance what cannot be said. A hand over the mouth. A march in reverse. A corpse that rises, over and over.
Occupy public space: not with slogans, but with presence. Eyes locked forward. Arms unmoving. Dare them to act against stillness. Get out there. DO NOT HIDE.
Prepare for persecution: this is not a career anymore. That comes after liberation. This is a consecration. You will be threatened. Watched. Bruised. Do it anyway.
V. Abandon the Digital Trap
Do not be seduced by the pixel. It is a surveillance state’s wet dream.
Social media is not your ally it is your dossier.
The revolution will not be livestreamed because the revolution will hide you in the algorithm.
What to do now:
Exit the echo chamber: find basements, kitchens, woods. Turn off the phone. Speak mouth to ear, like lovers and fugitives.
Return to old espionage: dead drops, coded postcards, secret knocks.
Remember: this is theatre, but it’s also war. Build trust like a church.
Tight ensembles, unshakable cores.
Audition for each other’s lives. Make betrayal impossible.
VI. The Choice
They always come for the dreamers first. Then the teachers. Then the poets. Then the actors. And when they come when they pound on the dressing room door, demanding your silence, your surrender, your scripts,
they will ask, “Who gave you the right?” You will answer:
The ghosts did. The disappeared. The martyrs. The ones whose names you tried to unwrite. They gave us the right. And we are writing them back.
The lights are flickering. The seats are emptying. The air is thick with grief. Use your grief like gasoline.
They want you atomized, frightened, silent. They are wrong.
VII. The Trojan Choir
Let them think the stage is all we know. Let them believe we gather only in black boxes and under hot lights. Let them scoff when we march in costume, chant in iambs, cry on cue. Let them miscalculate. Because while they watch the stage, we enter the house.
Infiltrate.
Join their churches; not as converts, but as echoes of abolitionists in borrowed pews. Sing louder. Lead Bible study. Rewrite the parables.
Join their clubs en masse. Not to glorify the gun, but to outvote the bloodlust. Break quorum. Elect peacemakers in camo. Flood their school boards. Pack their town halls. Take the meeting minutes. Rewrite the mission statements.
Learn their rules. Then, with legal precision and guerrilla grace, dismantle their altars. Do not be afraid to wear their uniforms. The underground has always worn disguises: a cassock, a business suit, a badge. Even Judas wore sandals.
What to do now:
Build coalitions of contradiction. Let them try to categorize that. Speak their language, then twist it. Preach justice from their pulpits. Demand equity at their gun ranges. Shout "love thy neighbor" until the walls crack. And when we have the numbers...
and we will
Vote like saviors.
Govern like prophets.
Rewrite their creeds until they don't recognize the faith. Inside every oppressive structure is a hollow place where the truth can echo.
Make that echo yours.
The lights are flickering. The patrons are waiting. The Revolution has called Places.
The curtain belongs to us now.
—Tony Kushner, Angels in America
The Revolution Has Called Places.
by Montserrat Mendez
4/18/2025
The curtain is not rising. The curtain is plummeting!
Gallows-fast, guillotine. Sure.
Collapsing like a myth under scrutiny. A nation convulses, a Constitution buckles, and in the choking dust of a crumbling scaffold, something ancient and monstrous materializes not a symbol, not a metaphor, but a boot.
Real. Heavy. Pressing.
We’ve seen it before.
It marched through Prague. It trampled Santiago. It crushed Vilnius, Tehran, Selma. It knows the choreography.
It always arrives rehearsed. And yet, as it stamps forward, it forgets something. The boot forgets the stage. The stage: a scrappy patch of floor and light where the unsayable becomes spoken, where the dead appear with notes in their pockets, where resistance isn’t theoretical; it’s embodied. A body onstage, trembling but upright, defies the erasure. It says: I’m still here. And I remember everything.
I. The Stage as a Weapon
Why do tyrants quake at the sight of a theatre marquee? Why did Franco outlaw Lorca? Why did the KGB monitor Chekhov? Because theatre is combustible. It sweats. It breathes. It talks back. A play cannot be confiscated when it's memorized in the marrow.
A performance is un-deletable when carried like contraband in the hearts of an audience.
What to do now:
Produce the seditious plays: not only the old warhorses (Brecht, Miller, Havel, Soyinka), but new scripts, born of this crisis, naming names, pointing fingers.
Untether the art: leave the temples. Stages are vulnerable; theatre must migrate to laundromats, to bus stops, to forest clearings where ghosts gather.
Practice insurrection: rehearse not for opening night but for rupture. If protest is illegal, make your blocking a riot. If gatherings are banned, whisper monologues in bars.
II. The Script as Evidence
Authoritarians do not burn books because they dislike fiction. They burn books because fiction remembers. A script is testimony. A playwright is a witness. And a rehearsal room can become an archive of the soon-to-be-forbidden.
What to do now:
Chronicle obsessively and then print it and hide it.
Use analog.
Use ink.
Use code.
Hide drafts in piano benches.
Memorize scenes like smuggled psalms.
Let the powerful damn themselves, verbatim theatre is holy work. Their speeches are soliloquies. Their lies, tragic irony. Put it on stage in some way. Present it to your audiences under a new light.
When things get bad and they will, Bury the text, literally, if need be. In time capsules. In boxes beneath the floorboards. In the memory of those who will rise again.
III. The Audience as Accomplice
No revolution was ever launched from a mezzanine seat.
The passive spectator is a symptom of the sickness. But a crowd that shouts back, that storms the stage, that tears up the program and cries “Again!” that is a movement in its embryonic form.
What to do now: Shatter the fourth wall,
violently.
Not with whimsy but with fury.
Make them complicit or make them run. Enact resistance as liturgy, end every show with action: voter registration, asylum applications, bail funds.
Curtain calls are calls to arms. Protect your own; make the house a haven. Assign medics, watchers, guardians. Make the theatre a citadel where the vulnerable come to train.
IV. The Body as a Barricade
When language is shackled, the body speaks prophecy. When words are outlawed, gesture becomes gospel. The body onstage, trembling, bleeding, refusing to kneel is the first barricade.
What to do now:
Choreograph rebellion: dance what cannot be said. A hand over the mouth. A march in reverse. A corpse that rises, over and over.
Occupy public space: not with slogans, but with presence. Eyes locked forward. Arms unmoving. Dare them to act against stillness. Get out there. DO NOT HIDE.
Prepare for persecution: this is not a career anymore. That comes after liberation. This is a consecration. You will be threatened. Watched. Bruised. Do it anyway.
V. Abandon the Digital Trap
Do not be seduced by the pixel. It is a surveillance state’s wet dream.
Social media is not your ally it is your dossier.
The revolution will not be livestreamed because the revolution will hide you in the algorithm.
What to do now:
Exit the echo chamber: find basements, kitchens, woods. Turn off the phone. Speak mouth to ear, like lovers and fugitives.
Return to old espionage: dead drops, coded postcards, secret knocks.
Remember: this is theatre, but it’s also war. Build trust like a church.
Tight ensembles, unshakable cores.
Audition for each other’s lives. Make betrayal impossible.
VI. The Choice
They always come for the dreamers first. Then the teachers. Then the poets. Then the actors. And when they come when they pound on the dressing room door, demanding your silence, your surrender, your scripts,
they will ask, “Who gave you the right?” You will answer:
The ghosts did. The disappeared. The martyrs. The ones whose names you tried to unwrite. They gave us the right. And we are writing them back.
The lights are flickering. The seats are emptying. The air is thick with grief. Use your grief like gasoline.
They want you atomized, frightened, silent. They are wrong.
VII. The Trojan Choir
Let them think the stage is all we know. Let them believe we gather only in black boxes and under hot lights. Let them scoff when we march in costume, chant in iambs, cry on cue. Let them miscalculate. Because while they watch the stage, we enter the house.
Infiltrate.
Join their churches; not as converts, but as echoes of abolitionists in borrowed pews. Sing louder. Lead Bible study. Rewrite the parables.
Join their clubs en masse. Not to glorify the gun, but to outvote the bloodlust. Break quorum. Elect peacemakers in camo. Flood their school boards. Pack their town halls. Take the meeting minutes. Rewrite the mission statements.
Learn their rules. Then, with legal precision and guerrilla grace, dismantle their altars. Do not be afraid to wear their uniforms. The underground has always worn disguises: a cassock, a business suit, a badge. Even Judas wore sandals.
What to do now:
Build coalitions of contradiction. Let them try to categorize that. Speak their language, then twist it. Preach justice from their pulpits. Demand equity at their gun ranges. Shout "love thy neighbor" until the walls crack. And when we have the numbers...
and we will
Vote like saviors.
Govern like prophets.
Rewrite their creeds until they don't recognize the faith. Inside every oppressive structure is a hollow place where the truth can echo.
Make that echo yours.
The lights are flickering. The patrons are waiting. The Revolution has called Places.
The curtain belongs to us now.
