Oh... Aint YOU so Edgy?

It seems that each time I turn around, some milquetoast or incomprehensible author receives the laurels of a "revolutionary voice" in today's theatre. The eagerness with which our critical establishment flings this wreath at every pair of feet they see is almost embarrassing. This reflex, labeling skill, boldness, or fashionable dissent as radical, is not new, and it shows no sign of fading. As a culture, we are quick to elevate the skilled transgressor, the rule-breaker, the one who runs counter to accepted norms, bestowing the title of “revolutionary” on them as a badge of honor.

The most thorough treatment of this impulse appears in Robert Brustein’s Theatre of Revolt, which examines playwrights from Henrik Ibsen to Jean Genet. Brustein argues that their work represents a theatre of revolt, of pulling down the old. He identifies three kinds of revolt:

• Messianic Revolt: The dramatist seeks to destroy the old order and replace it with something of their own making.
• Social Revolt: The dramatist rejects the existing system but offers no clear replacement. The stakes are lower, the vision less defined.
• Existential Revolt: The dramatist no longer believes the old order can be cast off. Instead, mere persistence becomes the act of rebellion.

Brustein’s framework is neat, even elegant, consisting of a scale measuring the revolutionary dramatist by their energy and capacity for change. Yet the structure breaks down quickly. The subject of the Messianic playwright, for instance, rarely succeeds in their mission. Even Nietzsche struggled to define his “dancing Socrates,” and Ibsen’s early messianic works, Brand and Peer Gynt, end in the failure of the would-be superman. In practice, the three categories collapse into a binary: transgressive or cisgressive—against the order, or of it.

This binary defines the revolutionary solely by opposition. As such, their status becomes nearly unassailable. To critique a revolutionary is to seem complicit in defending the old order. Worse, for those fans of Rent, it may involve the appearance of selling-out. Like trying to disprove a negative, such criticism chases its own tail directly down a drain. If a revolutionary stands for nothing but rejection, critique is cornered into defending what has already been cast off. In turn, the revolutionary can take comfort in their purity and accolades, congratulating themselves.

But this binary itself stems from a misunderstanding. “Revolution,” from the Old French revoler, meaning “to roll back” or “to complete a circuit.” Semantically, at least, one is damned by the very course of action. John Locke echoes this in his notion of revolution as an “Appeal to Heaven,” a cry to God, the ultimate source of value, when all earthly recourse fails. Understood this way, revolution is not mere transgression but a cisgression: a return to, or an appeal for, a deeper or higher order of value. Thus, the binary collapses again.

We must also remember: cultivating dissenting voices can create sanctuaries for dissenters, spaces where the like-minded gather for comfort and solidarity. But such comfort is rarely revolutionary. The opposition these figures generate is often contained by the limited relevance and reach of American theatre, and further dissipated by minor concessions or purity-driven infighting.

The effect is simple: being called revolutionary is a paper crown that damns with faint praise. The theatre, once the vital source of real change (including the Velvet Revolution as recently as 1989), is a toothless shadow of itself. Dramatic revolt should invite scrutiny, growth, and renewal. It can spiral upward, it once did.