The Paw Print

By Elena Whitford, Arts & Culture Editor

A Siri-like voice announces election results over the loudspeakers state by state. At first slowly, then very quickly, a right-wing male candidate inches toward victory over a woman of color.

But this scene plays out not in 2024, but in 2040. This is the opening of the first act of Laura Winters’s futuristic new play, “Coronation”, which played at the Den Theater from Oct. 11 to Nov. 16.

Although the audience was visibly nervous at this performance on Nov. 3, the last show before Election Day, the similarities between the performance and the reality outside the theater quickly lessened as the years fast-forwarded, and elements like a nuclear apocalypse driving America into underground tunnels were introduced.

Or did they? The most chilling part of this play, after all, is that it begins in the not-too-distant future and builds incrementally from there. By the end, it becomes entirely plausible that an AI could look just like a human and have the same dissatisfaction with the government to boot.

The initial premise of “Coronation” is fairly relatable for anyone paying attention to politics. After another crushing loss for a woman in the US presidential election, she and two of her politically involved friends write a document declaring a fourth branch of government: a queen with the power to introduce one new law per year which the American people then vote on. Doubting that it would ever be taken seriously, they rip it up. That’s Act One.

But a hundred years later, things aren’t looking too good for the U.S. with the aforementioned nuclear holocaust lowering morale. At some point (we soon realize this is all backstory to Act Two, so we aren’t sure of the details), someone finds that document from 2040, pieces it back together and decides it might be just the thing America needs. When we begin the second act, we are at the coronation (get it?) of the very first Queen of America.

For the next two acts, we follow the new American monarchy over the next two centuries or so through much of the same hardships faced by any other branch of government: differing interpretations of its founding documents, limitations on its power and resistance from other branches. It gets to the point where the audience begins to wonder whether the play could have done without all the absurdity and still gotten across its key point. The American political system was fundamentally created in such a way that, for better or for worse, real change is not possible.

As we settle into the reality that Donald Trump will be our 47th president, “Coronation” provides both elements of fear and of reassurance, both a portrait of our society and a warning for the future. It is more than disappointing that in almost 250 years we have been unable to elect a woman as president, and the systemic silencing of women’s voices in politics is part of the issue. “Coronation” reminds us that only by taking concrete action, rather than simply lying down and accepting the fate of American women, can we hope to ensure that we won’t spend the next 250 years the same way.