STAGE Right Theatrics, America’s only conservative theatre company, will present its fifth annual Conservative Theatre Festival® on January 29 and 30, 2021.
Three performances will be held (January 29 at 7.30pm, January 30 at 1.30pm and 7:30pm) and – for the first time in the company’s history – will be performed live to a limited audience and live-streamed across the world.
I started Stage Right in 2016 in response to the one-sided perspective presented by plays that adhere to a progressive point of view.
That view is one of considerable distaste for America and its institutions. It posits that America is irredeemably racist, that human nature – if it exists – is malleable, and that government ‘experts’ can solve societal problems.
It mistrusts the spirit of individualism, favouring instead a single-minded collective that prioritises social justice and the ‘common good’ over personal liberty.
Finally, it believes that America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are products of their time, not applicable to the challenges of today’s complex world.
Stage Right Theatrics attempts to present a different worldview that hearkens back to our traditional reliance on institutions such as family and church and celebrates a limited and non-intrusive use of government.
It is our belief that the rights recognised by our Founders – apart from and preceding government – still have legitimacy and truth as the natural condition of human beings in a free society. As such, they are innately recognised by theatregoers as being self-evident.
The six short plays produced in this year’s Conservative Theatre Festival® honour the traditional values we share as a nation, despite their bastardisation by progressives. The plays are:
n For a Daddy by Anne Nygren Doherty (California): A little girl reared by two women wishes she had a daddy.
n Friday Night Dead Teiresias, by Mark Dinsmore (Florida): An other-worldly television show interviews a seer from the past.
n Grandma’s Easter Parade, by Jason Ford (Maryland): A grandmother wants to hold on to tradition, even if her family thinks it’s silly.
n If the Shoe Fits, by Hope Bolinger (Ohio): A shoe sales clerk and a customer discuss finding the right fit – in both shoes and society.
n Unplanned, by Linda Howard Cooke (Nebraska): An unplanned puppy causes havoc in a woman’s life.
n When Mrs. Thompson and Cynthia Met at the Beach, by Joshua Danese (New York): a little girl and a woman’s seemingly chance encounter at the beach becomes a choice between life and death.
Each play, either subtly or overtly, captures the quest to protect life, to preserve tradition, to question the notion of sexual fluidity, and to defend the natural order of gender roles.
They actively oppose the contemporary worldview that celebrates mediocrity, victimhood, and places the past on a path to extinction.
The plays of the Conservative Theatre Festival® embrace the past, warts and all, in order to learn from and be guided by it. They find the positive in the here-and-now and steer clear of victimisation as a character trait.
They portray a healthy disdain for the truisms of contemporary ‘woke’ culture, which places a premium on identity as defined by skin colour or sexual orientation.
They show a desire (indeed, even a need) to celebrate and exalt life, to allow individuals to guide their own destiny, and to declare ‘freedom’ not as a construct, but a natural right ordained by Nature’s God.
We need conservative theatre today more than ever. Theatre has always been a space where artists can comment upon the trials of contemporary life. However, this commentary has almost exclusively been the domain of the Left.
Today we see the calls for strengthening and improving society by, ironically, categorising people by their defining characteristics.
Thus, we have producers seeking plays by women, about Native Americans, or focused on the LGBT community. What we don’t have – and what we desperately need – are plays about ideals and values, and not simply the values of the fashionable present, but those that have sustained us throughout our existence as a nation.
We need plays that elevate us toward the realisation of our inalienable rights, dismissing faddish beliefs seeking to create an equality of outcomes and a risk-free world, and championing the individual as both the cause and owner of his or her destiny.
Stage Right Theatrics seeks to fill the gap – a gap that has widened and deepened of late – with an alternative point of view that, if we study it for just a minute, is the antidote to our society’s ills and has been with us for 234 years and counting (God willing).
Please consider purchasing a ticket to the fifth annual Conservative Theatre Festival®. Tickets are $12 and can be purchased here. Please read the instructions carefully! We also offer discounts for seniors (60+), students (K-12, college), and veterans. For discount codes, write to conservativefestivaloh@gmail.com.
Thank you!
