News that a London fringe theatre had commissioned a festival of short plays responding to the Trump presidency would surely have the new US commander-in-chief and his supporters preparing their most sneering tweets. As the stereotypical British theatre-worker would be reluctant to watch Donald Trump presenting The Apprentice, let alone leading the free world, the evening seemed set to be a cathartic but unenlightening echo chamber of liberal howling, dismissing America’s political revolution as racist, misogynist isolationism.

It turns out, though, that the enterprising Theatre 503 in south-west London has shown the US’s unexpected president more intelligent consideration than he would be likely to extend to their project. At high speed, the theatre has secured new work from a roster including one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, Caryl Churchill, and a leading American dramatist, Neil LaBute, alongside other talents from the US and the UK.

Illuminating verbatim piece … Sara Stewart in A Stronger Arm by Christopher Adams. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Although it would be surprising if any of the dozen invitees is a Trump supporter, they impeccably attempt, in the average eight minutes allotted, to enter the mindset of those who are. In this respect, the most arresting piece is Baby Girl, by the Midlands-based writer Lorna French, in which a young African American woman in the midwest is forced to understand the sheer economic desperation that has led her father to accept a job enacting one of Trump’s most controversial policies.

Equally illuminating is A Stronger Arm, a verbatim piece consisting of fragments from an interview that a London-based US writer, Christopher Adams, conducted with his mother on a Christmas trip home. Although Mrs Adams’ religion, politics and gender should have made Trump inimical to her, she came to the conclusion that he would make her and the nation safer. The piece should be taught on creative writing courses as an example of how to explore with integrity views with which the writer disagrees.

The picture that emerges across the works is of implausibly diverse Trump voters – women, African Americans, Hispanics, the young – who collectively concluded that the United States was so economically unequal and legislatively deadlocked that it required shock tactics at the ballot box.

Generational divide … Laurence Ubong Williams, Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge and Maynard Eziashi in Hardcore by Roy Williams. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

A recurrent theme is Trump’s success in dividing to rule. Roy Williams’s Hardcore features a lethal generational divide in attitudes on the London Underground. The most original setting – a dance company in a refugee camp in the occupied territories – shows political allegiances going in unexpected directions in Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Trump in Palestine.

Some may object that none of the scripts attempts a defence of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy or mentions that the loser in the electoral college handsomely won the popular vote. But LaBute’s Two Years On, in which wealthy Americans delight in the benefits of Trumpism, and Churchill’s Beautiful Eyes, where familial love trumps politics, are sharp comedies that question whether the argument that democratic decisions must be respected risks silencing dissent and protest. The connection with Brexit is explicit.

Budgets and scheduling have allowed Theatre 503 to run only four performances, straddling the Trump inauguration. But the best of these pieces – performed by a tremendously versatile, fast-learning cast of 10 – deserve a further life on stage, online or radio. A shattering defeat for liberal values has been turned to dramatic success.