At 8 p.m. on June 12, 2025, LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts’ rendition of “The Winter’s Tale” began as community members and neighbors settled into lawn chairs and dug into snacks on Lawton Plaza. At the same time, in downtown Los Angeles, a curfew was in effect as a response to civil unrest following ICE raids and the federal government’s deployment of California National Guard and United States Marines.
On the surface, it is difficult to reconcile the contrast between the pleasure of a social gathering under the stars and the government aggression being endured in our backyard. However, those who participated in the eighth season of Shakespeare on the Bluff – actors and audience members alike – would attest to the production’s role in the resistance.
Bryant Keith Alexander, dean of LMU’s College of Communication and Fine Arts writes: “Live theatre is a critical communal activity — one that is only realized between the work of the actors and the present participation of the audience. While theatre is often reductively approached as an ‘entertainment,’ it is always a laboratory of social examination, in which scenes of everyday life, the real and surreal, are presented as case studies for close examination.”
Live theatre has the power to disrupt, and Shakespeare’s relevant material moves all parties to face political realities, while emphasizing the urgency of such a task. This was clearly illustrated in the production of “Measure for Measure” that took place July 10, 11, and 12. The play asks the audience to confront mortality (memento mori) as they consider questions of morality.
“Shakespeare is asking us to remember that we’re all going to die,” director Stacey Cabaj said. “If you try to remember that every day, how does that change how you live, what you think mercy is, what it is to be merciful and a morally good person?”
Cabaj took these questions of mercy and morality to a literal sphere in her interpretation of the play that cast the audience as the court of public opinion and asked them to vote to determine the outcome of the performances. Inspired by theatre practitioner, playwright, and theorist Bertolt Brecht, she was determined to blur the fourth wall and invite the audience into discourse, considering questions such as: What happens to the body politic when a permissive government is replaced by a punitive one? What makes a just society? Does one follow the leader? The church? The letter of the law? Or can these forces co-inform each other?
Act 5 in “Measure for Measure” takes place in a courtroom trial, and the audience was presented with five different appeals. Via QR codes, the audience participated in a real-time vote which was broadcast to both the audience and the actors, who then reacted based on the results. There were 25 potential outcomes to the play, and each night of the performance took a unique turn based on the audience present. In this case, theatergoing became a distinctly political act.
For theatregoers seeking escapism, this experience did the opposite; it provided a space for deep immersion into lived politics. With the quick succession of events, the audience experienced a heightened sense of consequence from their vote. They voted to determine if a woman’s truth was dismissed or considered libel; they voted to determine if the accused were released on good behavior or forced to remain in prison; they voted to determine if a foreign national was released or deported; they voted to determine if an assaulter was forced to pay reparations or condemned to death; they voted to determine if a woman accepted or denied a proposal from another woman.
For Cabaj, this work is rooted in empathy-building. “We build a whole world with the ensemble where each of the characters has their own need, persona, tragic flaw” she said. “We don’t want to distance our audience. We want our audience to consider the problems of the play and then go out and change the world,” she continued.
This sentiment explicates theatre’s role in the resistance. Resistance takes many forms. Sometimes, it might look like a boycott, or a march shoulder to shoulder with neighbors. Other times, resistance can be practiced through sharing a safe space for imagination and worldmaking.
Shakespeare on the Bluff’s Artistic Director Kevin Wetmore writes: “Shakespeare spoke truth to power with his plays, and we do the same [at LMU]. These plays are not old, or ‘safe.’ The comedies remind us of how foolish we can be in our everyday lives and relationships; the tragedies serve to remind us of what happens when we are not guided by the better angels of our nature.”
Shakespeare is renowned for making statements about rulers of his day, and people sense a sort of presentism in his stories. For Cabaj, it was important to make a distinction between the context of the play and our present time. The 2024 presidential election played a large role in this decision. When she originally chose to direct the play a couple years ago, Cabaj was optimistic that Kamala Harris would be the next president. “I was interested in casting a Black actress as [the play’s protagonist] Isabella and consider what the future of leadership could look like in this country, informed by faith and grounded in ethics and law and justice, and that understands the pain of the past and is seeking good trouble,” she said.
Her vision was disrupted when Donald Trump took power. Cabaj started fielding a lot of questions about the play’s antagonist, Angelo, a repressive authoritarian. Rather than adjudicating the play from today’s context, Cabaj decided to set the play in a near-future dystopia that references Vienna, imagining what it could look like about five years from now. This positioning helped the audience realize that autocrats take various forms.
“We don’t need to make [Shakespeare] overtly political and relevant in production because his work already deals with issues that are of importance in our time, as much as in his,” Wetmore writes.
Cabaj, who recently became a United States citizen, said her role empowers her to act in the political sphere. Reflecting on her newfound position of security, she has been inspired to interrogate the allyship she can participate in now. This year she also takes on the leadership role of chair of Theatre Arts. “I want to be the kind of leader that I’m looking for in the world,” she said. “And I wanted to produce a play in which the leader was asking questions about what it meant to be good and trying to live her way into the answers.”
For Wetmore, responsibility extends to the audience. “What is ‘Julius Caesar’ without the citizens of Rome either approving or rebelling against those who would lead them?” Wetmore asks. “Shakespeare reminds us of what it is to be human, but also what it is to live in community and society with others. He knows us sometimes better than we know ourselves, and his plays, when done well, remind us of who we are, and, better yet, who we could be.”