polis

Playwrights addressed the polis not by dramatizing current events but by recasting tales from the mythological and historic past to sharpen critical thinking on contemporary concerns.

They were woven into the fabric of a democratic polis.

Shadow puppets fill in the ancient Greek backstory involving a fellow named Thaddeus, who markets water in disposable vases that the polis can’t get enough of.

More than that, a kind of arts polis, a democratic gathering place for arts and ideas.

They also started to create what Václav Benda called a “parallel polis” – a world in which one tried to act as if one was already free.