Award-winning playwrights Carlyle Brown, Moisés Kaufman, and Lisa Kron are no strangers to the rising tide of censorship targeting discussions of sexuality and identity across the country.
Each of them has grappled with cancelations of their plays and pressure to silence their art. In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage at the 2025 PEN World Voices Festival, they spoke about the shifting fault lines for cultural institutions under the Trump administration.
“The impact on theater artists and our free expression isn’t new,” Nottage said at the panel, Disappearing Acts. “This is something that’s been going on for a long time, and often we are the canaries in the coal mine. … Very often, high school plays are the first things that get banned and let us know the ways in which the wind is going to blow in the future.”
Brown (Down in Mississippi), Kaufman (The Laramie Project), and Kron (Fun Home), spoke about how to stand up for bold theater in an age of creeping censorship.
On the struggle with discomfort
A performance of Down in Mississippi was halted by Black students at Texas Wesleyan University over their objection to the use of the N-word.
Brown: “I was really gobsmacked by the fact that these Black college students were not wanting to look at this history. … The irony to me was that the play is about people their age, who went towards harm, and their efforts ended up passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It was a terrible time for these young people. I mean, it was scary, and very much, I think, similar to the world that we live in, that we’re about to do, right?”
Nottage: “One of the things that I talk to my students a lot about is the difference between harm, what harms us, and what challenges us. … I’ve certainly been challenged when I go to the theater, but I appreciate what makes me think more deeply. … I feel like, on some level, that’s what art’s meant to do. You know, it’s meant to ruffle our feathers. It’s meant to turn over a stone and force us to look at all of what’s under it.”
On quiet censorship
Kron said she’s sensing a pullback in local productions of her stage version of the frequently banned graphic novel Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel.
Kron: “Sometimes shows get canceled, but often they just don’t get booked. And it’s been very moving over the past several years to look at the bookings of Fun Home – tiny, tiny community theaters in Oklahoma, in Tennessee, in Virginia, in Mississippi, all really incredibly moving. I can’t say this for sure, but it looks like red state bookings in this year, I don’t see them.”
Nottage: I noticed that this is the first year in which (productions of the play Sweat) completely dropped off, that suddenly it’s not booked into high schools. It’s not being booked into community theaters across the country. And I don’t think that that’s an accident.”
On censorship as a spark
Kaufman said every year, his play The Laramie Project, about the aftermath of the beating death of Matthew Shepard, gets canceled by three or four high schools or community theaters.
“One of the things that I’ve noticed about censorship is that there’s always an unwillingness to own up to what the censorship is really about.”
Moisés Kaufman
Kaufman: “The first thing that we noticed, that was interesting, is they never said, it’s because it’s gay. They would say, well, there’s too much violence, or it uses the ‘faggot’ word too many times, or it’s hard for students to deal with. One of the things that I’ve noticed about censorship is that there’s always an unwillingness to own up to what the censorship is really about. … But what ended up happening was that for the students who were denied the chance to do their play, it was the first time that they experienced censorship on their own skin. And invariably, that backfired. So what would happen is that the students would rent a space next door to the high school and do the plays.”
On who is censored
Kaufman: “Historically, the books that are censored are books by black writers, by LGBT writers, by immigrants. So it’s not that what’s being tried to be censored is the actual text of the book, it is the people who are writing the book.”
On supporting resistance in the theater community
Kron: “I think obviously there’s a lot of obeying in advance, or just fear and pull back and feeling that punishment for me doing these things is inevitable. And I think we can embolden people to not cede that space preemptively. … Don’t get me wrong: I feel confused, I feel afraid, I feel all things. And also, this is theater’s moment. You know, this is theater’s moment, because you can make theater anywhere. You can make it anywhere, and you can make it out of anything, and that is its superpower.”
Want more?
Check out the panelists’ plays:
- Down in Mississippi, by Caryle Brown
- The Laramie Project, by Moisés Kaufman
- Fun Home, by Lisa Kron
