5 enjoyable info about ‘Are You Now or Have You Ever Been’ off Broadway

“I’m not a dupe or a dope or a moe or a schmo. And I’m not ashamed of anything I said in public or in private.”

That’s a quote from Lionel Stander, an actor and Screen Actors Guild founding member, from his defiant testimony earlier than the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1953. It’s additionally an applause-worthy line in Eric Bentley’s 1972 play Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, which dramatizes quite a few HUAC hearings. During the committee’s peak between 1947 and 1956, stage and display screen greats had been known as to call suspected communists in Hollywood and affirm their very own patriotism, with the specter of being a minimum of blacklisted if not jailed.

Director Anna D. Shapiro is reviving the play at New York City Center by way of September 11, that includes a rotating forged of at the moment’s celebrated showbiz figures. But regardless of all of the well-known names, a key message of the play — one which makes it so well timed to revive — is that they are not a lot completely different from us. We might all someday discover our speech suppressed, our loyalties questioned, and our integrity examined, whether or not on a grand political scale or not.

“These were just everyday people — artists, directors, singers, dancers,” mentioned Billy Eugene Jones, who performs actor and activist Paul Robeson. “You realize these people were into, maybe, basically a book club, and they ended up at a Senate hearing. I want people to understand that that could be any of us. You could just find yourself, one day, in the middle of a whole lot of mess.”

Performed on NYCC’s intimate below-ground stage, Are You Now makes that truth notably clear and pressing. Learn extra quick info about Are You Now under earlier than getting tickets to look at a harrowing chapter of historical past unfold.

Get Are You Now or Have You Ever Been tickets now.