America

Great art has always emerged from tumultuous times. This isn’t to say that peaceful eras (if there really are such things) inspire lesser or tepid art, but what is undeniable is that art thrives on unrest. T's Culture issue, on newsstands April 14, pays tribute to the artist’s inability to unquestioningly accept the society in which she lives. For it, we asked 15 playwrights to imagine America five years into the future — in 2024. Below, read original works, arranged in four thematic chapters, by the playwrights Jocelyn Bioh, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Jeremy O. Harris, Naomi Iizuka, Michael R. Jackson, Patricia Ione Lloyd, Ted Malawer, Mona Mansour, Terrence McNally, Lynn Nottage, Adam Rapp, Paul Rudnick, Nassim Soleimanpour, Celine Song and Sharr White.

It’s not a coincidence that we chose theater as the form of literature that best expressed the anxieties and hopes of the moment. As McNally, to whom this issue also pays tribute, tells Philip Galanes in their conversation, “If you want to change minds, write a great editorial for the Op-Ed page. But if you want to get people to feel differently, reach them through the theater.”

Alongside six of the plays you’ll find videos in which actors including Nathan Lane, Kerry Washington and John Lithgow perform the works, as well as a short film adaptation of “South Platte” by Sharr White. Finally, to accompany Galanes’s interview with McNally, the filmmaker Cheryl Dunn shot a short documentary about the great American writer.

Read more about the making of the issue.