The McCarthy Era

Cosplay and Witches; Witches and Drag; Drag and Politics; Politics and the undeniable anxiety and influence of Popular Culture. The McCarthy Era takes an unabashed approach of appropriation to celebrate, criticize, and comprehend the years between 1949 and 1952. Anne Bogart purports, that the theatre community in the United States was stuck by a cataclysmic event: McCarthyism and that this political attack forced artists to radically alter or adjust their lives and values. Some fled the country never to return, some were blacklisted and forced to stop working, and others simply changed, recanted, disengaged and shut up. Today, most of us are not aware of the serious consequences of that forgotten catalyst.

“The McCarthy Era is not a biopic, it is not a historical document, nor is it based on facts. The research into who McCarthy was, and what his namesake did to a country led me to consider something more interior. A dystopia between or beyond the surreal and the transcendent; the human condition in imagined realities.”

- Raja Feather Kelly

Spring 2021

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Direction by Raja Feather Kelly

Lighting Design by Tuce Yasak

Photography by Kate Enman

Performance by Amy Gernux,
Sara Gurevich, Rachel Pritzlaff, Collin Ranf, Aaron Moses Robin, & Benjamin Wolk

SUPPORT