Lecture: Political Theater, from the Greeks to Brecht and beyond, with Lee Roscoe

Offered in conjunction with the current exhibition VISUAL VOICE: Freedom to Create, Lee Roscoe presents a one-hour lecture exploring political theater from the Ancient Greeks to Brecht and beyond. Her talk examines how theater has engaged with power across time—through character-driven drama, revolutionary forms that challenge conventional narrative, and direct agitprop designed to confront the status quo.

Roscoe will discuss some key playwrights, movements, and theories, as they relate to political theater, including Greek tragedy and catharsis; William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593); Friedrich Schiller’s Don Carlos, Infant of Spain (1787); Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (1882); Federico García Lorca (1898-1936); Clifford Odets (1906-1963) and his work with the Group Theatre which focused on the struggles of the working and middle class during the 1930s; The Federal Theater Project's Living Newspaper plays and David Hare's version of these in Stuff Happens; Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and Václav Havel (1936-2011), prominent 20th-century playwrights who used theater as a tool for political commentary; Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999) and Poor Theatre; Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and Theatre of Cruelty; Augusto Boal (1931-2009) and Theatre of the Oppressed; The Living Theatre founded in 1947 by Julian Beck and Judith Malina; Ellen Stewart (1919-2011); and experimental theater of the 1960s; as well as works such as The Normal Heart (1985) and The Exonerated (2000). The lecture also considers the revolutionary theater writings and plays of Amiri Baraka (1934-2014).

Read Roscoe’s May/June 2025 Artscope Magazine Editorial, Aversion Therapy Theater: When Performance Art Becomes Necessary.

Lee Roscoe is a playwright and activist. She studied theater in New York and worked in off-Broadway productions and independent film before leaving the stage to design the Instant Dress™, an early multi-use garment now archived at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is also a longtime journalist and the author of several books, including Wampanoag Art for the Ages: Traditional and Transitional (2022), and is an award-winning environmentalist.

Returning to theater in her 50s, Roscoe has written numerous plays performed at venues including The Living Theatre (NYC), Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and the Provincetown Theater, as well as on public and community radio stations nationwide. Her work has received support from local chapters of the Massachusetts Cultural Council and praise from theater artists and scholars such as Judith Malina, David Hare, Michael Kahn, Avra Sidiropoulou, and historian Howard Zinn. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the National New Play Network (NPX), Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU), and Experts Create Theater.

Most recently, Roscoe wrote and directed the underground film Dreams from a Planet in Peril, which premiered at the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Director of Art Benton Jones called it “an imaginative film noir response toward environmental decline and greed.” A segment of the film, The Warning, premiered at the 10th Annual Chelsea Film Festival (2022) in New York. She also wrote and directed Impossible?, a story about what happens to friends in a small New England town when a tyrannical president takes over the nation.

Across forms, Roscoe’s work explores how a dysfunctional societal matrix shapes the human heart, personal relationships, and humanity’s connection to the natural world. Some of her work is available at https://www.youtube.com/@leestephanieroscoe, and at PRX » Piece » The Mooncusser's Tale

 VISUAL VOICE: Freedom to Create

An International Juried Exhibition

January 1 - April 26, 2026