stagecraft

The Incorrigibles could not help but think about him as they fashioned their disguises, for Simon was a man of the theater, skilled in the art of stagecraft.

Penelope was not a playwright, like Simon, but she had once attended nearly all of the first act of a show in the West End, so she was no stranger to stagecraft, either.

But perhaps the most consequential gesture of his appearance came when Mamdani, whose mother is a celebrated filmmaker, showed off his command of stagecraft.

They might not have achieved that goal - Coldplay have already set themselves a ridiculously high bar - but this was stadium stagecraft at its absolute finest.

But what has changed — and what feels distinctly more insidious — is the migration of this corporate stagecraft into the very institutions entrusted with our care and education.