{"id":2311205,"date":"2026-03-03T23:39:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2311205"},"modified":"2026-03-03T23:39:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:39:49","slug":"seattle-theaters-latest-play-tackles-authoritarianism-censorship-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/seattle-theaters-latest-play-tackles-authoritarianism-censorship-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle theater\u2019s latest play tackles authoritarianism, censorship | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Theater review<\/h2>\n

Massive, unanswerable questions writhe like a ball of snakes at the heart of Sam Holcroft\u2019s play \u201cA Mirror,\u201d now running at 12th Avenue Arts in a production by Thalia\u2019s Umbrella. Perhaps the phrase printed on the program \u2014 \u201cthis play is a lie\u201d \u2014 clued you in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Holcroft\u2019s story, about theater artists working in a country where art is censored by the government, feels not like a static Gordian knot but something slippery and alive: a multiheaded ouroboros looping back on itself over and over again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it starts, of all places, at a wedding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Welcome! Choose your seat: bride\u2019s side or groom\u2019s side? But before Joel and Leyla can finish reciting their vows (more legal oaths than professions of love), the proceedings are halted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After this brief interruption, things can get started. We\u2019re really here to see a play \u2014 at our own risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The play is about Mr. \u010celik (Quinlan Corbett), a government official who fancies himself a die-hard supporter of the arts; his soldier-turned-ministry assistant Mei (Emily Verla); and a soldier-turned-mechanic-and-aspiring playwright Adem (Adam Tapp), who submits his first script for ministry review, per government policy, and ends up in the ministry\u2019s crosshairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adem\u2019s habit of snatching dialogue, verbatim, from this lived experience rubs \u010celik the wrong way. If Adem didn\u2019t invent it, isn\u2019t it a lie? Or is it the most true art there is?\u00a0<\/p>\n

To help answer that question, \u010celik later ropes in the established playwright Bax (Jon Lutyens), who is used to sanding down his artistic edges for the sake of producibility. It\u2019s cost him dearly.<\/p>\n

But remember: This play is a lie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA Mirror\u201d premiered at London\u2019s Almeida Theatre in 2023<\/a> and quickly transferred to the West End in 2024 in a production starring Jonny Lee Miller.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Holcroft, whose other plays include the unexpectedly literal family drama \u201cRules for Living\u201d and \u201cEdgar & Annabel,\u201d another authoritarian-centric piece recently produced in Seattle by Pony World Theatre<\/a>, doesn\u2019t try to untangle these knots so much as toss them at the audience like a ball of yarn to either snarl them further or start to tease apart as they see fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without ruining any of the many twists and reveals in \u201cA Mirror,\u201d expect layers of reality to be stripped back over time. Don\u2019t worry about keeping everything straight; as soon as you think you\u2019ve got it figured out, the script knocks another narrative Jenga piece out of place.<\/p>\n

While \u201cA Mirror\u201d is anchored by strong performances from Verla and Corbett, as directed by Terry Edward Moore and Daniel Wilson, its urgent rhythm never quite clicked into place, and that sluggishness meant that the rhythm couldn\u2019t be interrupted, as it needs to be, many times over. Without screeching halts and sudden boiling points, the proceedings meld into a tonal sameness that doesn\u2019t scream \u201cart in a surveillance state.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the play\u2019s exquisite discomfort remains, found amid questions of authoritarianism and censorship that feel particularly salient right now, as do questions about what art can or can\u2019t (and should or shouldn\u2019t) do. What it is and what it is not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All plays are lies and all plays are truth, depending on how you think about it \u2014 but that\u2019s the ballgame. Black-and-white thinking limits us all. The freedom of artists is the freedom of audiences, and \u201cA Mirror\u201d helps us appreciate how lucky we are to be asking these questions at all.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theater review Massive, unanswerable questions writhe like a ball of snakes at the heart of Sam Holcroft\u2019s play \u201cA Mirror,\u201d now running at 12th Avenue Arts in a production by Thalia\u2019s Umbrella. Perhaps the phrase printed on the program \u2014 \u201cthis play is a lie\u201d \u2014 clued you in.\u00a0 Holcroft\u2019s story, about theater artists working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2311206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2311205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Seattle-theaters-latest-play-tackles-authoritarianism-censorship-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2311207,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311205\/revisions\/2311207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2311205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2311205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}