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Review: ‘The Humanities’ looks away from the campus culture wars it purports to interrogate

suntimes.com · 19h · first reportShare

Sometimes in theater, timing is everything. I've seen that work in a playwright's favor, such as a play about a Queen (“ Coronation ” by Refracted Theatre), premiering in the weeks after Trump's 2024 election. In other cases, writing plays on slippery and ever-changing contemporary themes can put pressure on the writer to do more to respond to the moment. That's what happened the last time Zayd Ayers Dohrn premiered a play. “ Revolution(s) ” opened at Goodman Theatre in the height of Operation Midway Blitz, and, despite the title, it failed to say anything revolutionary. Dohrn, who commendably likes to write about current events, has a new play called "The Humanities," premiering at Victory Gardens, that takes place in the aftermath of a problematic speaker being invited to the fictional Lincoln University. The problematic speaker, Luka (Daniil Krimer), is underwritten. We know he is a former student of a professor named Martin (Steve Pickering) and has been influenced by the professor