Five works of political theater to help you process the election

Election week has been chock-full of drama already, but here are five works of theater you can currently stream online that offer some context for what's happening in American politics right now. They run the gamut from wild comedy to dark drama and one extremely famous Broadway musical. 

What the Constitution Means to Me
In What the Constitution Means to Me, which had a hit run on Broadway last year, writer-performer Heidi Schreck revisits her teenage years, when she earned money giving speeches about the U.S. Constitution, and examines the document's effect on women—such as one of her foremothers, a mail-order bride who came to a mysterious end. "Schreck has crafted a powerful argument that uses everything at hand: legal analysis, a dive into history, a consuming rage at sexual-assault statistics and her own very personal reasoning," wrote Helen Shaw in her five-star Time Out New York review. "Here is something that every citizen must see: It’s theater in the old sense, the Greek sense, a place where civic society can come together and do its thinking and fixing and planning." The show was filmed in full by director Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) in the final week of its Broadway run, and can now be watched on Amazon's Prime Video.

What the Constitution Means to Me | Photograph: Joan Marcus

Aunt Dan and Lemon
Although Wallace Shawn is best known for his adorable persona as a character actor ("Inconceivable!"), he is cherished by theater fans as the author of smart, dark and menacing stage works. In this edition of its Reunion Reading Series, the New Group revisits its 2003 revival of Shawn’s exceptional 1985 political drama Aunt Dan and Lemon, which slyly confronts the seductiveness of inhumanity and fascism. The formidable Kristen Johnston plays the Ayn Randian Aunt Dan and Lili Taylor is her painfully malleable young mentee, Lemon; they are are joined by nearly the entire original cast of Scott Elliott’s production, including Marsha Stephanie Blake, Melissa Errico and Maulik Pancholy. "It resonated so much more with me now," Johnston told me recently. "Aunt Dan was basically the original MAGA. When we did it 17 years ago, it felt so far away, I never could’ve imagined we’d be here only two decades later. Terrifying, but it makes the play even that much more significant." Aunt Dan and Lemon is available through November 29 along with its companion piece, Shawn's dystopian Evening at the Talk House. 

Aunt Dan and Lemon | Photograph: Carol Rosegg