Trump doesn’t know what “non woke” musicals are

I am not a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. In the war between the March 22 birthdays, I am more of a Stephen Sondheim kind of girl. But even I have an issue when Donald Trump considers Webber’s musicals “non-woke.” My guy, they’re musicals.

The President is now the “king” of the Kennedy Center. Meaning he’s the one who makes a lot of decisions about the Kennedy Center Honors. An audio leak details Trump’s plans for his version of the ceremony and none of it is good! He wants those being honored to be more “conservative” and even claimed that men like Steve Wynn the hotel mogul could be honored. That’s not really what the Kennedy Center is for.

But one of the more baffling moves in Trump’s take on the Honors is to celebrate musicals. His two picks? Cats and Phantom of the Opera. A board member asked if there were any “totally woke” productions of these musicals in recent years. I’d argue there were never any “non-woke” versions of the musicals. Why? Because musicals are “woke” by definition of these MAGA conservatives and their beliefs.

Theatre has always been a more left-leaning sphere and what I do think is fascinating is that people like Trump and his base do not realize what the underlying message of theatre really is. Do they think cats is just about cats? I guess it is, in a way, but also there is no way a cat has ever actually enjoyed Donald Trump’s company. Let me tell you. Cats can smell an enemy from a mile away.

But I do think the idea of including “non-woke” musicals is actually laughable. The sentence alone is the opposite of what theatre is meant to do but try explaining that to someone like Trump.

Musicals are “woke” if you subscribe to that idea

I have always viewed theatre as a whole as a more progressive and liberal art form. You can, seemingly, watch a musical and miss the themes present within the piece but that’s not what my liberal arts degree in Performance Theatre taught me to do. So if you are someone like Trump and you view musicals as just seemingly forms of entertainment and not some deeper art form, sure. There might be some “non-woke” productions you could claim.

But that’s also a very surface level view of theatre and such productions. Even original productions of Oklahoma! or Kiss Me Kate have themes that would be considered “woke” by the MAGA side of things. And those are musicals that even I find too dated. But also the joke of theatre is that you can restage a production or interpret it differently than the guy next to you. It is why the most recent production of Oklahoma! was so spectacular. They didn’t change a single word of the show, they just changed how we viewed these characters through staging and acting.

Which is why this entire conversation is baffling to me. Not only is theatre one of our more progressive art forms but even with more conservatives productions and staging, the subject matter is still “woke” by MAGA standards. So what are they going to do? Have Ben Shapiro write a bad musical or something?