A Letter From Our Executive Director
Michael Socarates Moran
Dear Friends,
This time last year Donald Trump was re-elected. We had a full 2025 season planned, but when the results came in, I realized I had not fully imagined what the world would feel like if he won. The demoralization was overwhelming. Yet because theater expresses the communal spirit, and because moral energy rises from community, it felt that theater might play a small yet significant part in renewing our capacity for moral resistance.
We set aside our original season and rebuilt it in order to respond to the new political order and the cultural mood his election signaled.
In response to this President’s revival of colonial rhetoric we programmed Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, a portrait of resistance to colonial rule. In the face of authoritarianism we programmed a radical take on Hamlet and in the face of rising fascism we programmed Cabaret.
It is sobering to know that we were right in our belief that these plays would only grow more relevant a year later.
Over the course of this year we also lost approximately $200,000 in previously awarded grants or depleted government funds. These losses are real, and as we enter our end-of-year fundraising campaign, we could use your support. Any amount helps.
Theater may appear small, but these acts of resistance matter. They enliven the spirit, feed the soul, and affirm that the human being cannot be reduced or quantified. When our governing body dehumanizes its people, we need spaces that celebrate humanity.
We will announce our 2026 season in January. The theme, on the 250th anniversary of America, will be “the land of the free”, an ambitious season that interrogates the meaning of freedom and how the loss of it signals a death knell for democracy. And yet Vaclav Havel reminds us that freedom is found where we feel most alive.
Perhaps, then, the theater as a celebration of life is where we can plant the seeds for renewal. For there is a connection between theaters closing across the country and the devolution of democracy. The democratic project requires seeing people as people, never less. Theater, in both form and content, is a celebration of such humanism. As theaters close, so too does our democratic consciousness.
By being a part of the theater, we give our attention to the irreducibility of the human being. And that is a small but necessary act of resistance.
As you plan your end-of-year-giving, please consider giving to the Oakland Theater Project and participating in our project.
We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and, as always, we are because of you.
With much gratitude,
Michael Socrates Moran
Executive and Co-Artistic Director