Making News.(political plays)

At the start of Britain's recent inquiry into the death of defense scientist David Kelly, attorney Geoffrey Robertson requested that the proceedings be televised. Kelly was the alleged source behind the BBC's claim that the government had "sexed up" evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. "My lord," said Robertson to the judge, "your inquiry will appear on television anyway. It appears by way of what is called a dramatic re-enactment. It usually begins as a play at a theater in north London, then transfers to the BBC." Robertson was referring to London's Tricycle Theatre, which over the past decade has pioneered a new kind of political play, editing the text of landmark legal cases into gripping, witty dramas. And, as predicted, the case was transformed in October by journalist Richard Norton-Taylor into the theater's latest hit, "Justifying War."

Across the world, political theater is flourishing as audiences seek a deeper understanding of complex events. "People are hungry for a more engaged theater," says American playwright Naomi Wallace, author of "Birdy," the tale of a traumatized World War II veteran, now playing off-Broadway in New York. British author David Edgar, whose two-play epic about a U.S. gubernatorial election, "Continental Divide," is currently winning high praise at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California (where Arnold Schwarzenegger was just elected governor), notes how September 11 helped rekindle popular interest in geopolitics. Before then, he says, "the great political dream of communism had died, it was felt that globalization meant national politics could do less and less and in Europe there was a decline in the role of the state. What happened on 9/11 [is that] we were reminded that politics does have a role."

The global friction over the war in Iraq has only added to the sense of political urgency. In Britain, after the overwhelming 1997 victory of Tony Blair's "new" Labour Party, the nationwide consensus meant there was little need for dissenting plays. Now, as discord and disappointment with Blair's government grows, edgier works are making a comeback in the West End. "We live in a country without an opposition [party]," says writer Tariq Ali, whose comedy "The Illustrious Corpse" was recently produced at London's Soho Theatre. Ali hoped the play, about a politician whose wife murders him for selling out his socialist ideals to Blair's agenda, would help compensate for an ineffective Tory opposition. In Japan, which is considering deploying troops to Iraq, The Newspaper, a Tokyo theater company that satirizes current events, ...