Writing a play about Trump

Capturing the essence of the Orange One

In 2018, I was invited to write a scene that had something to do with Donald Trump. It was a student project. QUT’s Vena Cava Theatre Company invited a broad swathe of Queensland playwrights to contribute anything they wanted on the Giant Oompa-Loompa. My scene is available for paid subscribers at the bottom of this post.

My concern about Trump then is nauseatingly similar to now - six years on. What does Trump mean for Australia? In particular, what does it say about how Western democracy is changing?

It’s the same for other playwrights who have written about Trump. Trump is not nearly as interesting as one might assume. Tony Kushner - who wrote about Trump’s mentor Ray Cohn in the Pulitzer-winning Angels in America - says his play will focus on historical forces, not the man himself.

‘He’s the kind of person, as a writer, I tend to avoid as I think he is borderline psychotic,’ he said back in 2017. ‘I definitely think that incoherence lends itself well to drama, but he really is very boring. It’s terrifying because he has all the power, but without the mental faculties he ought to have…We know that he will never reveal a depth of humanity, because he’s been around for decades and there has never been a sign of it.’

Critically, he doesn’t change. Dramatic characters have to change, and Trump is incapable of it.

Similarly, Anne Washburn’s play Shipwreck: a Historical Play About 2017, did not find its footing in the President himself. Instead, a group of liberal friends gather at a wintry vacation home and discuss politics, but everything unravels into a wild, magic, romp through American ideas. Washburn wrestles with the questions that Trump’s election means like it’s a fever dream. She is screaming: What does this all mean???

As I write this, I am currently writing a play about Gough Whitlam. Outside of contemporary verbatim stuff, it’s a rare dalliance with historical drama for me. I’ve rarely seen a historical drama I’ve truly been gripped by - the people are always less interesting than the ideas of what they represent. Oppenheimer comes close to a perfect historical film - marrying the political and the personal in one swoop.

So when I came to writing a scene about Trump in 2018, I turned to Australian politics. I imagine Abbott, Turbull, Bishop and Joyce watching the results turn in. Six years on, we have changed far more than America has. The Liberal National Party is starving. Dutton is betting all chips on a nuclear policy - but it’s difficult to imagine how that will win him so many of the seats he lost to the teals in the last election.

I am more thankful for Australia’s political apathy than ever. More often than not, I think it keeps us in the centre of politics, towards sensible solutions. Unlike our American counterparts, who’s identity politics are so allegiant to specific parties that a political fundamentalism is inevitable. It means extremist leaders are inevitable.

I think Trump will win again.

But I hope not.

Scene below for paid subscribers.