IN Series kicks off its “Illicit Opera” season of banned and dangerous works with The Cradle Will Rock, the radically pro-worker folk opera by Marc Blitzstein that in 1936 the feds famously shut down on opening night. To evade the ban, the cast schlepped to another theater where they performed from the house for a packed audience, accompanied by Blitzstein at the piano alone onstage. Tapped to helm IN Series’ production was Shanara Gabrielle, recently named producing artistic director of the politically energized Theater Alliance, whose direction of Working, a Musical, based on the pro-worker book by Studs Terkel, I greatly admired. She graciously took time out of rehearsals for a Zoom interview that I found illuminating and inspiring (edited for length and clarity). Shanara Gabrielle John: I’ve been looking forward to talking with you, because of your commitment as a preeminent theater artist to social justice and your conviction that theater can be an agent of social change. Shanara: Thank you. You said recently: “I am driven by justice and joy, and this has led my work to sit at the intersection of art and public practice.” I remember being deeply impressed by your direction of the musical Working at Black Lives Matter Plaza. It was fall 2021, we were just getting out of COVID, but we were safely watching theater outdoors. Yes. It was so great. Judging from that production and from reading your artistic statement and manifesto, you seem someone for whom art without a social conscience is not something you have much time for. I do think that’s true. I believe it’s my purpose here in the world, and that connecting it to the big issues that matter is the most important thing. So the line between Working and The Cradle Will Rock is totally a direct link. The stage and audience on Black Lives Matter Plaza for ‘Working, a Musical.’ Photo courtesy of Working in DC. Where did your passion for social justice come from? I’m from Iowa, and it’s a big part of my roots and how I became who I am. In Iowa, we caucus. There’s something about coming into your school gym with your neighbors who agree and disagree with you, who love their kids in the same way that you love your kids but may not agree on your politics or your religion or maybe your beliefs about the workplace or capitalism. But you come into your school gym together and you’re there to convince your neighbor to cross the gym and see your perspective. That kind of visceral, physical connection to the things that matter in the world and how we make those connections as theater artists — that’s a piece of who I am. I grew up with rigorously conscientious parents in a small town where you had a sense that what you did mattered. (The flip side is that what you did, everybody knew about!) But there was an understanding that what you did impacted the people around you, from the smallest thing to the bigger things in the world. Also, I happened to be living in St. Louis at the time that Michael Brown was murdered, and that became a turning point for me where I recognized the kind of structural systems that create injustice in our world. At the time we were calling ourselves artivists, protesting in the streets and making art out of protest. Both became integral to the movement and to who we were as people. I’ve always thought that theater matters more than just for entertainment. It’s one of the ways we learn new things, combat loneliness, and start to understand things that are outside of our worldview. I don’t think I’m attracted to plays, stories, operas, theater that doesn’t have a core of justice and meaning and purpose to it. Of course, we can find purpose or meaning in any piece — the comedies, the tragedies, the musicals, the fantastical — but I’m always looking for works that have social change at the core. Thinking about forms of theater that serve to make society more just, are there particular theater makers who inspire you? Yeah, a couple of people are on my ride right now. John [A] Johnson, is a great Playback Theatre artist here in DC, born and raised in Anacostia. I had a Playback community in St. Louis and New York as well. The Theater of the Oppressed practices on the international stage have had a big impact on me. Also, a woman named Agnes Wilcox was one of my very early mentors. About halfway through college, I met her. She did work in the prison system with Shakespeare, and I worked with her to pilot the first juvenile-detention theater program. There’s a This American Life about Agnes and her work. It’s about her doing Hamlet in the prisons. Agnes is no longer with us, but she was a very early influence for me of a person who heard a lot about really good theater and also found her work at the center of the place she could make the biggest impact. Given the commercial context in which so much theater exists, how can artists of conscience make a difference? I spend 90% of my time with a piece of my brain working on the structural puzzle of how we make theater more sustainable, more impactful, less damaging, more vital — always asking ourselves, How am I making an impact in this moment? How is this decision that I’m choosing for this show or with this theater having an impact on my wider community? And this is so hard for us theater artists because we can be really insular. It’s really easy for us theater artists to forget to read the newspaper and talk to people about things that have nothing to do with the theater. Who are we having conversations with? Who are we surrounding ourselves with to understand people’s priorities that are outside of our norm or little circle? This connects back to Working and The Cradle Will Rock. For me as a theater artist, I found the greatest opportunity and success in partnerships where the central question is “How can theater be of service to what you are trying to do?” That’s always a core question for me. ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ set design by Ethan Sinnott and costumes designed by Rakell Foye and Yvette Pino courtesy of IN Series. Theater is a transient experience you have while it’s going on. How do you translate that into theater of consequence, meaning it has a follow-through, it has a result? I believe in theater with a strong point of view, and I believe in artists with a core understanding of values. But I don’t believe in theater that tells us what to do. I don’t think direct calls to action are as effective as a strong story that you can’t not think about. You see The Cradle Will Rock on opening, and it’s in your mind rolling around there a month later when you go to the polls. You weren’t asked at Cradle Will Rock to sign up for your local union. You weren’t asked for a specific concrete action, but the art itself was so impactful that you can’t help but be jostled by it. That’s what we hope for the most — that there’s something about it that sits with you in your heart and mind in some way. How would you describe The Cradle Will Rock, its history and politics, to someone who doesn’t know anything about it? And what connected you to it? We’ve talked about social justice as a core tenet of my work, but there’s been a real draw for me to stories that are populist, meaning for the populace, for all of us. Stories of working-class people, about class and race and money, the haves versus the have-nots, those kinds of stories I’m drawn to in every way. From [playwright Clifford] Odets to Working to Cradle Will Rock, those stories are always speaking to me. The history of Cradle Will Rock is more famous than the show itself. The Federal Theater Project [a branch of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration] had funded and supported artists and projects across the country. It was a time when we truly had public support for people making art and working artists making art. It wasn’t about famous people; it was about everyday people making art. And Cradle Will Rock was shut down for being “too pro-union,” but if you ask me, it was shut down for being too anticapitalist. It took too harsh a critique of the American government and the way that we were moving out of this time period where we’ve been supporting working class people and into a time where war was valued, where money was valued, where power was valued, and Cradle Will Rock was speaking against that. It’s truly Brechtian: We are talking to you and we know you know you’re watching a play and we’re participating together. It’s truly powerful in that way. The famous story is that the piece got shut down. The theater was blocked off. They sent the police and locked the theater, and the stage manager was stuck inside. They didn’t know that they had locked the stage manager inside the building, and the stage manager snuck the piano out and they rolled the piano many blocks down the street with the whole cast and the audience to another location and performed the piece with only [librettist composer Marc] Blitzstein on the piano on stage, and all of the actors performed it from the audience. They weren’t allowed to go on stage because the union had not approved them so they performed from the house. And it had an infamous one-night run, no scenery, just a piano and artists in the audience. ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ set design by Ethan Sinnott and costumes designed by Rakell Foye and Yvette Pino courtesy of IN Series. Have you thought about how the work will land in this current presidential election season? It speaks to issues in this election right to the core. It’s braver than most of the theater we experience today. They were pulling no punches. There are things about it that totally sound like today. We’re talking about Mr. Mister who owns everything in town, and Mrs. Mister who pays off everybody in town, and the allegory of all the other representative characters. It’s Brecht in that way too. It is also truly period. It’s 1930s. It’s truly opera. It’s sung through. Though it hits hard, it doesn’t alienate people. There’s something about it that makes you lean in. Speaking of allegorical figures, in the very first scene, we meet the character accurately named Moll, and she is, as she says, solicitin’. What do you understand about the way prostitution functions in this play? Everyone is set up as a prostitute. Everyone else who’s in night court that night is also in for a form of prostitution. Hers just happens to be a sexual form of prostitution. The others are prostitutes to the powers that be and to money. Everyone is subject to soliciting in this play. So there’s a recognition among the workers in this story that they are she. Yes. There’s a wonderful song when they send up art for art’s sake — which must be dear and near to your heart. Yes, it’s an attack. When I say it doesn’t pull any punches, it’s attacking us artists! [Laughs] What have you done to stage The Cradle Will Rock for today? Our design team — especially set designer Ethan Sinnott and co-costume designers Rakell Foye and Yvette Pino — had this idea that our version of Cradle is set in 1930s, but also we want these people to look like 2024. So there’s a mashup of 1930s and very contemporary. We want this to feel like us today so we could see these people now. And we’ve intentionally doubled characters and have people playing both the haves and have-nots, both the Liberty Committee and the workers, leaning into this idea that on this story it’s not bad and good. It’s all of us are complicit in the way this functions, and it’s all of our responsibility to try to figure out how to make our society more fair and just. I imagine that somebody reading this would want to know how to have a career path like yours: how to care about what you care about and make it happen. If you were asked for advice from someone younger who wants to make a difference in the world through theater, what would you tell them? Don’t compromise your values. That’s you. That’s who you are. That’s what you have, and living by your values is hard work, and the only true judge of that is your internal or spiritual life, and you can’t be subject to external judgment about that. ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ show art courtesy of IN Series. The Cradle Will Rock plays October 5, 6, 12, and 13, 2024, presented by IN Series performing at the Goldman Theater in the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($35–$72) online or by calling 202-204-7763 The Cradle Will Rock also plays October 18, 19, and 20, 2024, at the Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 West Preston St., Baltimore, MD. Purchase tickets ($20–$30) online or by calling 410-752-8558.