TRUMP AS THEATRE

This blog was going to focus on my return to Perth but I can't resist sharing this article by friend, academic, theatre director and historian Julian Meyrick. Julian, as well as being a delightful human being, is one of the smartest people I know. He's written a piece for Arts Hub about Donald Trump from a dramaturg's point of view. What this means is that he's looking at Trump as a performer and his presidency as a play. 



Julian starts his piece this way:

Donald Trump is often seen as a performer, an actor, a lover of drama, attention and applause. His role on The Apprentice is frequently mentioned, as is the theatricality of his appearance: the yellow hair, the puckered lips, held high like a rooster’s beak, the displays of septuagenarian male bravura. Advice at the time of his 2025 inauguration to “grab the popcorn and sit back”, points up the performative expectations around him at the start of his second presidential term.

But dramas can defy viewer expectations, especially in their sequels. As POTUS #47 explores the full range of his executive powers, culture war angertainment gives way to global order meltdown. Possibility becomes uncertainty, and genre-discordant events upset the logic of on-stage action. When a show tanks, the result isn’t loss of data, but loss of sense. As the main narrative dissolves, replaced by disconnected dialogue, random movements and outsize spectacle, a brain-sapping effort is needed to follow it.

I encourage you to keep reading his fascinating insight into the world of Trump the actor.



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