Hindsight in Review: New York Magazine / Vulture

Vulture wrote about seeing a double bill of The Nosebleed is at the Japan Society along side our production of Alix Sobler’s Hindsight. Here’s an excerpt of the piece:

Figuring Out Failure in the First Person: The Nosebleed and Hindsight

By Helen Shaw

… Something similar is happening in Hindsight, though its aesthetic couldn’t be less like the spacious, quiet-filled Nosebleed. In a crowded little theater, jammed tight with props, a woman works at a messy desk. When the lights go down, she looks up. “Oh, hey, I’m the playwright,” she says. A little ripple of laughter moves through the tiny audience. “Weren’t expecting that, were you?” she laughs back. In fact, the flustered-seeming woman with the laptop will try to destabilize us repeatedly as we make our way through Alix Sobler’s autofictional attempt to grapple with the cause of our polarized politics. Even after an hour of explaining why she wrote the play we’re watching, the woman idly wonders if she might not actually be Sobler. Has she been fibbing all along? When a person promises you she’s telling the truth, every warning light on your instrument panel should glow red. If the last 30,000 years of human development have taught you nothing else, it’s taught you that.

Sobler (it’s really her) doesn’t go so far back, though — she’s pretty sure the crucial breaking point in public trust came about 30 years ago. Sobler’s convinced that the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a 1949 FCC regulation about “equitable” presentation of controversial issues on broadcast news, holds the key to our present troubles. Her actors compete, hammily, to define the Doctrine for us; Sobler manages to shut them up only by reading directly from the FCC rulebook. She introduces the four Reagan-appointed commissioners (including the touching Daniel Pearce as James H. Quello) who will vote on the rule, and they bicker spiritedly. Sobler keeps telling us that if she can adequately dramatize the meeting when the government opened the gate to alternative facts, she’ll have — what? As the show proceeds, Sobler deliberately reveals the weakness of her own project. At one point, forced by an actor (Craig Wesley Divino) to actually state the counterargument to her lefty position, she becomes suddenly persuasive.

Sobler is writing about the failure of good intentions, most compellingly her own. Whenever something goes wrong in a scene, she pops in from the side with her hand up to take the blame. The self-flagellation starts to affect the show’s structure, which keeps being interrupted by a repeated 2016 Thanksgiving dinner scene with Sobler’s quarreling, politically divided family. She would rather not see that awful Thanksgiving dinner again, but clearly the fight haunts her and thus the play. She admits to doing a bad job of imagining the commissioners’ discussions, which include facts they couldn’t possibly know and 21st-century retrospective reasoning. That failure she and director Aaron Rossini handle lightly, with cheesy ’80s needle-drops and behavioral exaggerations, abetted by a cast that gets up to velocity even with a tiny runway. Those 2016 scenes, though, ratchet tight that loose mood. The arguments are on a loop: The words don’t change, but as they repeat, the mood turns bitter, then violent.

The overall rhythm of the comedy sometimes falters — the recursive structure seems to travel the same ground too often; there are diversions (a discussion of equal opportunity employment) that distract rather than enrich. And, of course, there’s the fact that the play keeps persuading you of its own inability to find certainty or even a way forward. Still, is that really so bad? After a double bill of Hindsight and The Nosebleed, it’s increasingly difficult to see this mired-in-the-old-news quality as a flaw. In both plays, writer-performers demonstrate how to stretch out a hand to a father who will not ever understand, who is past hearing. Who cares if we don’t find the answers in the past? Isn’t it still worth looking backward? We have to learn somewhere how to reach out to things that aren’t capable of reaching back. That particular failure will be relevant, eventually, to us all.

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Hindsight in Review: The New Yorker

Don’t miss this glowing review of Hindsight in this week’s New Yorker magazine.

Now Playing: Hindsight

By Vinson Cunningham

How to write a political play? This show, presented by Fault Line Theatre, at the Paradise Factory, and written by Alix Sobler—who also stars, anxiously, as the Playwright—reveals just how fraught and difficult the job is, especially if you think politics depends on truth. The Playwright, laptop always in tow, frets through the composition of a play about the Fairness Doctrine, whose abolition, in 1987, may or may not have landed us in the hot epistemic water we’re wading through today. That “may or may not” is the uncertain axis on which Sobler brilliantly makes the audience swing. Those clichéd and much derided “both sides” multiply deviously. Under the direction of Aaron Rossini, a wonderfully versatile and antic ensemble—Andrea Abello, Craig Wesley Divino, Lynnette R. Freeman, Daniel Pearce, and Luis Vega—alternates roles impressively, playing the top brass of the F.C.C. as well as the Playwright’s news-poisoned family. See “Hindsight” to watch that pit in your stomach be turned into art.

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Hindsight in Review: Theater Scene

Check out this incredible review fromTheater Scene!

Hindsight

By Darryl Reilly

The pop music classics of the 1980’s intermixed with audio clips of President Ronald Reagan telling jokes is an apt pre-show soundtrack to playwright Alix Sobler’s Hindsight. With Stoppardian flair, Ms. Sobler manages to make an exploration of the 1987 elimination of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine into a cleverly informative non-linear 90-minute entertainment.

Wearing a plaid shirt, a masked woman enters and takes a seat at a desk. She eventually takes the mask off, “Should we start? We should probably start right?” She announces that she is the playwright, and she really is as this role is played by Sobler. She has a deadpan yet passionate presence as she engagingly interjects her observations during the presentation while occasionally interacting with the audience.

The backstory of the production is imparted. Sobler was commissioned by the Fault Line Theatre which “creates and produces socially relevant, character-driven plays for today’s audiences” to write a political work in time for the 2020 presidential election, but the production was delayed by the pandemic. She came across the 1987 case of the Fairness Doctrine and decided that was a suitable topic for dramatization.

For the sharply written play’s first 20 minutes we get cute and self-conscious “metatheatricality” as the difficulties of tackling such subject matter are stated. Then there’s representatives battling during Washington, D.C. office scenes, a contentious Thanksgiving family dinner where political issues are argued, and a dance sequence accompanied by a Whitney Houston song. These are often interrupted by Sobler proclaiming, “No, let’s go back…” It all ultimately coheres, concluding with a moving mini coup de theatre.

The dynamic ensemble of Andrea Abello, Craig Wesley Divino, Lynnette R. Freeman, Daniel Pearce, and Luis Vega all exhibit tremendous comedic and dramatic skills in their multiple roles wearing costume designer Dina El-Aziz’s smart everyday outfits.

Director Aaron Rossini’s energetic, brisk and precise staging is a great asset to the production as the cast rapidly moves through time and space on scenic designer Tristan Jeffers’ fine configuration of basic furniture. Cha See’s lighting design and Chad Raines’s sound design both add neat flourishes.

According to Wikipedia, the Fairness Doctrine:

…required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been considered by some to be a contributing factor for the rising level of party polarization in the United States.

The emergence of Rush Limbaugh, the rise of right-wing talk radio, the dominance of Fox News and the legality of tycoons buying multiple media outlets in the same region are soberly traced by Sobler to the 1987 vote by the five FCC commissioners to gut the Fairness Doctrine.

Hindsight is a highly theatrical rendered blend of facts, opinion and imaginative dramatic writing. 

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Hindsight in Review: TheaterMania

Thank you to TheaterMania for the very kind words about Alix Sobler’s Hindsight.

Review: Hindsight Is 2016 When It Comes to Rush Limbaugh and the Fairness Doctrine

Alix Sobler's new play grapples with far more than the origins of our tribal politics.

By Zachary Stewart

Storytelling requires a certain amount of dishonestly. No story — certainly not a 90-minute play — can even fully convey the complexity of its subject, much less the vastness of the human experience. So sins of omission are committed, as are embellishments, rebranded as "poetic truth." Playwright Alix Sobler is acutely (and occasionally too cutely) aware of this in Hindsight, her metatheatrical romp through the deregulation of broadcast media, now making its world premiere at the Paradise Factory under the banner of Fault Line Theatre.

The play is ostensibly about the Reagan-era abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, the 1949 FCC rule that instructed holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that is honest, equitable, and balanced. Looking back at this quaint attempt to mandate postwar media integrity from the perspective of 2021, we understand that those three adjectives can mean vastly different things to different people. Sobler is certain that when it comes to our present era of disinformation and discord, where even basic facts are the subject of vehement disagreement, all roads lead back to 1987 — when the FCC voted to scrap the rule, paving the way for hours of partisan talk radio and launching the national career of Rush Limbaugh.

We know because she tells us as much. "Hi, I'm the playwright," Sobler says at the top of the play to a woman in the front row. Sobler plays herself, or at least a version of herself called "The Playwright." She remains our constant companion throughout, interjecting asides and explainers, like Clippy in grad student drag (simple and effective costumes by Dina El-Aziz).

This metatheatrical conceit is at times helpful (when she explains who is playing whom), baffling (when she instructs the ensemble to tell the story of the 7-7-7 rule in the style of melodrama), and irritating (when she rings a bell every time one of her characters says something that is "true").

It is never dull, though, thanks to a zippy production directed by Aaron Rossini. Tristan Jeffers's open scenic design allows us to leap across time and place, with Chad Raines's evocative sound design filling in the gaps. All of these elements undergird excellent performances from a highly committed cast.

While they slip in and out of roles as needed, they primarily portray the folks in the room where it happened: There's 37-year-old FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick (Craig Wesley Divino, armed with a weaselly smile). He takes his orders straight from the Gipper, and he wants the Fairness Doctrine gone. He'll have to win over Commissioner James H. Quello (a passionate Daniel Pearce), who is worried about waning competition in the market. Commissioner Patricia Diaz (a no-nonsense Andrea Abello) thinks it is a free speech issue, and the government has no right to dictate content. Commissioner Mimi Weyforth Dawson (a very funny Lynnette R. Freeman) is inclined to agree, but she's still bitter about losing the chair to a younger man.

And then there's attorney Richard Bozzelli (Luis Vega, playing your favorite high school social studies teacher), who delivers a convincing presentation on how a broadcaster with a vested interest in creating controversy where there is none might use the Fairness Doctrine to present "both sides" of a settled debate. When one considers the reporting on climate change by media behemoths like News Corp. and Sinclair Broadcast Group, it's hard not to see his point.

Like a lower-stakes spin on Twelve Angry Men, they debate in the leadup to the fateful vote. But this scene is repeatedly overtaken by another: a boozy Thanksgiving sometime after the election of Donald Trump, where the playwright's family almost comes to blows over politics. The implication is clear: The decision taken in 1987 has had dire consequences for the state of political discourse in our republic.

Of course, the Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast radio and TV. It never regulated print media (itself the subject of corporate consolidation). Nor could it account for the way Americans increasingly see political affiliation as a marker of tribal identity, creating a market for both conservative blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and liberal scolds like Don Lemon. And how could a rule that was already obsolete in the late '80s, with the advent of cable, ever stop the tidal wave of bullshit that is the Internet?

To her credit, Sobler recognizes this, questioning her own certainty that the Fairness Doctrine was the Jenga piece that caused the whole tower of American civility to come tumbling down (if such a thing ever existed). Perhaps this is just a story good liberals tell themselves, a meme that explains away the cultural rift in one's own family in the few seconds it takes to flash by on one's news feed. The truth is a lot more complicated than that. But if more people were willing to probe their own seemingly unshakable beliefs, maybe we could start rebuilding that civility, block by block.

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Hindsight Features: Columbia School of the Arts

Alix Sobler, playwright of our upcoming production of Hindsight, was recently featured online by her alma mater, the Columbia School of the Arts.

'Hindsight,' by Alix Sobler '17, Debuts Off-Off-Broadway

By Angeline Dimambro

Alumna Alix Sobler ’17 will have her new play, Hindsight, premiere at the Paradise Factory later this month.

Fault Line Theatre will present the world premiere production of Sobler’s latest original play, with their very own founding Artistic Director Aaron Rossini directing. The mission of Fault Line Theatre is to create and produce socially relevant, character-driven plays for today’s audiences—striving both to challenge veteran theatergoers and welcome those new to the art form.

“In the theater, there has always been a grey area between what is fact and what is fiction,” reads the official show description. “As we've seen lately, grey areas can lead to confusion, disaster, and violence when it comes to the news and our politics. Where did it all begin? In Hindsight, an intrepid Playwright traces the problem back to 1987 and the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine. But as she builds her case, the facts, historical characters, and her own memories refuse to cooperate. Is it possible to trace our problems as a nation back to one decision made in the ’80s? And if so, is a play really the right place to unpack this conversation? Like an episode of John Oliver crashing headfirst into a production of Our Town, Hindsight is a comedy that asks questions about how we communicate when we can't even get our facts straight.”

In addition to being the author of the play, Sobler will also star alongside Andrea Abello, Craig Wesley Divino, Lynnette R. Freeman, Daniel Pearce, and Luis Vega in the production. The show will have its world premiere performance on September 18, 2021. Ticket information for all upcoming performances can be found on Fault Line Theatre’s website.

Alix Sobler is a writer of theater, podcasts, television, and film based in New York City. Her plays have been read or produced at theaters around the world, including the The Alliance Theater (Atlanta, GA), Theater J (Washington D.C.), Theatre Lab at FAU (Boca Raton, FL), Roundabout Theatre Company (New York, NY), The Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), The Finborough Theatre (London, UK), Segal Centre (Montreal QC), Fiasco Theater Company (New York, NY), The Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, ON), Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (Winnipeg, MB), Gulfshore Playhouse (Naples, FL), and others. Her plays have won and been finalists for multiple awards including the 2018 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition, The Gulfshore Playhouse New Play Series, the Columbia@Roundabout New Play Contest, the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (finalist), the Henley Rose Playwriting Competition (finalist), and the Jane Chambers Award (runner-up), among others. She is currently developing new plays with Theatre J (Washington, DC), and Fault Line Theatre (New York), and she is writing the book for a new musical. She is a graduate of Brown University and received her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University, where she was honored to study with Associate Professor David Henry Hwang, Associate Professor Lynn Nottage, and Special Lecturer Charles L. Mee, among others. She is also passionate about teaching playwriting and theater to up-and-coming artists, hobbyists, children, and anyone interested in expressing themselves.

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What We're Seeing: The Venetians

If you can’t wait to see Matt Barbot’s work as part of our 2021 Irons in the Fire season, then you’re in luck! Oak Park Festival Theatre, in partnership with Kane Repertory Theatre, will present a live virtual production of The Venetians, a new play that brings together characters from several of Shakespeare's plays to address contemporary issues.

Live: May 8 at 7:00pm EST
On Demand: May 10 - 16

A Little About The Show

Othello, the Moorish general, wants to give his beloved Desdemona the beautiful secret wedding she deserves... but that means borrowing ducats. Unfortunately for him, the moneylender Shylock has spent too long among the terrible people of Venice to see this marriage as anything but a death sentence for Othello. Unbeknownst to Shylock, however, his own daughter has begun an illicit romance that may bring their whole world crashing down on all their heads. A crossover between Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Othello, The Venetians uses two classical outsiders to ask questions about immigration, assimilation, national identity and what “acceptance” truly means.

Cast:

• James Vincent Meredith

• Larry Grimm

• Ellen Campbell

• Shana Laski

• Jordan Arrendondo

• Andres Enriquez

• Matty Robinson

• Savanna Rae

• Bryant Hayes

• Christopher Wayland

• Mike Dailey

Creative:

• Written by Matthew Barbot

• Directed by Edward Torres

• Stage Manager: Leigh Barrett

What We're Watching: Not Done: Women Remaking America

Our friend Sara Wolitzky’s feature film debut is a great one! After spending several years working with PBS on their MAKERS series, this project will be her official directorial debut. We can’t wait to watch!

STREAMING
pbs.org
notdonefilm.com

BROADCAST
October 27, 2020
8:00pm EST / 7:00pm CT

A LITTLE ABOUT THE FILM

MAKERS made television history in 2013 with its three-part PBS documentary which told the story of the modern American women’s movement for the first time. But a lot has happened since then. From the defeat of the first female presidential nominee to the historic inclusion of a woman of color on a major-party ticket, from the Women’s March to #MeToo and #TimesUp, from Black Lives Matter to the fight for trans lives, a new chapter in this storied movement is unfolding before our eyes.

There has been tremendous progress, but we are so clearly not done. Envisioned as an hour-long capstone to the three-part original series, "Not Done: Women Remaking America" chronicles the seismic eruption of women's organizing from the 2016 election through today, and the intersectional fight for equality that has now gone mainstream. Like the movement it documents, this story is told collectively: through the firsthand experiences and narratives of frontline activists, writers, celebrities, artists, and politicians who are remaking culture, policy, and most radically, our notions about gender. Premiering against the backdrop of an unprecedented pandemic and widespread social upheaval, "Not Done" shines a light on the next generation of feminists who are unafraid to take on complex problems and are leading the way to true equality.

What We're Seeing: One Room

This evening, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company (a fantastic theatre company in Vermont) will be premiering a one-night-only program of short, socially-distanced, one-person plays: One Room. This celebrates the launch of their Reimagined 2020 Season and is the first project in its new works initiative, Weston Writers. If you liked our […] in the Time of Corona series, then this is for you! Though we’ll be watching the broadcast live, you can always tune in later at the archived link below. Stop by, support the company if you can, and enjoy the show!

August 7, 2020
7:30pm - 8:30pm

A Little About The Show(s)

One Room explores the events of this year by looking at our homes as spaces of possibility and creativity. In May, we commissioned 14 of America’s leading playwrights to create short, one person plays that respond to the present moment and explore the questions, “What makes a home? What stories might be hiding in its ordinary rooms?” Writers will be joined by actors and directors from across the country and each play will be recorded to premiere online August 7. 

The Actor

• Written by David Cale

• Directed by Lee Sunday Evans

• Starring: Marin Ireland

Memories of New York and other things that are gone

• Written by Andy Bragen

• Directed by Knud Adams (The Regulars)

• Starring Josh Hamilton

Executioners

• Written by Torrey Townsend

• Directed by Celine Song (The Destiny Offered To Women)
  Starring Zi Alikhan (Beautiful Blessed Child), Miles G. Jackson , Aaron Rossini (Artistic Director, Fault Line Theatre)

Front & Back

• Written by Vichet Chum (High School Play)

• Directed by Whitney White (White History)

• Starring Susan Park

A Room Of Nobody Else’s

• Written by Will Eno

• Directed by Kenny Leon

• Starring Alfre Woodard

Room For Work

• Written by Melissa Li

• Directed by Mei Ann Teo (Final Boarding Call)

• Starring Shannon Tyo

before the witching hour / pandemic blues

• Written by Dael Orlandersmith

• Directed by Jade King Carroll

• Starring Daphne Rubin-Vega

The Visitations

• Written by Jen Silverman

• Directed by Mike Donahue

• Starring Dana Delany

Look at the Walls

• Written by Charly Evon Simpson

• Directed by Colette Robert

• Starring Erin Roché

Goodnight Nobody

• Written by Alena Smith

• Directed by Susanna Gellert

• Starring Michael Braun

Zoom Intervention

• Written by Noelle Viñas

• Directed by Estefanía Fadul

• Starring Liza Colón-Zayas

Mirror Game

• Written by Else Went

• Directed by Emma Rosa Went

• Starring Juliana Canfield (High School Play, All Nighter)

Rita

• Written by Josh Wilder

• Directed by Reginald L. Douglas

• Starring Jakeem Powell

To Do

• Written by Kit Yan

• Directed by Peter J. Kuo

• Starring Poppy Liu

[...] in the Time of Corona

Dear Fault Line Theatre Family,

Good afternoon. I hope this email finds you safe and sound and sane as you navigate your lives. Everyone at Fault Line Theatre is happy, healthy, and as crazy as we’ve always been - no new developments on that front. In case you haven’t heard, we want to let you know that we’ve postponed all in-person Fault Line Theatre activities indefinitely, but that should come as no surprise to anyone. However, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hard at work. Quite the opposite in fact.

We want to invite you, our extended family of friends and fans and supporters, to enjoy some online content from many of our esteemed collaborators. Over the past few weeks, our family of artists has been working together - digitally, of course - to share stories about this time from our individual and collective lives.

This series, featuring the work of your favorite Fault Line Theatre artists is called [...] in the Time of Corona. You might be asking: Hey, Fault Line, what does [. . .] mean? Honestly, it means anything and everything and nothing at all. [Loneliness]? [Loss] or [Lust]? [Confusion]? [Peace]? Or maybe it’s just those three dots you see when you’re waiting for your crush to text you back:

[...] in the Time of Corona.

We’ve paired up writers with actors and let them toss ideas around, grab their phones, and shoot a story, monologue, poem, or mini-play with the goal of bringing some clarity, pathos, or levity to all of our lives. Artists need to create, and we’re proud to give our family a digital canvas to paint their stories on.

Keep your eyes on our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube feeds every Tuesday and Friday starting tomorrow, Friday, April 10th with Its Own Crown a new piece written by Liba Vaynberg (Round Table, The Oregon Trail) and performed by Karl Gregory (Round Table, From White Plains, Frogs). Sending you all love, light, good health, and peace in this time of uncertainty. Please never hesitate to reach out with any questions or comments or simply to say hello and check in. We miss all of your faces.

Love and solidarity,
Fault Line Theatre

What We're Watching: Famous Cast Words

Our friend Lynne Marie Rosenberg is the creator and host of a brand new television show, Famous Cast Words. It is now available everywhere for streaming on ALL ARTS, the dedicated arts platform of New York Public Media (WLIW / WNET / Thirteen). Be sure to tune in!

STREAMING (App, web, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV)
Feb. 5 - Ep. 1: Amber Gray
Feb. 12 - Ep. 2: Maysoon Zayid
Feb. 19 - Ep. 3: Emilio Delgado
Feb. 26 - Ep. 4: Aneesh Sheth

BROADCAST (Tri-State area only)
Feb. 19: Amber Gray & Maysoon Zayid
Feb. 26: Emilio Delgado & Aneesh Sheth

A LITTLE ABOUT THE SHOW

In “Famous Cast Words," stars of the stage and screen discuss representation and inclusion issues facing the entertainment industry. Hosted by actor and writer Lynne Marie Rosenberg (HBO's "High Maintenance"), "Famous Cast Words” blends hilarious readings of language from the casting world with an earnest investigation into what's wrong, and what's changing, within The Biz.