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    558. DONALD TRUMP, POLITICAL POWER, AND REWRITING HISTORY IN TRACY LETTS' THE MINUTES

    558. DONALD TRUMP, POLITICAL POWER, AND REWRITING HISTORY IN TRACY LETTS' THE MINUTES

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    Before Donald Trump’s first term in office (2017-2021), as the 2016 presidential campaign entered its final months, Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Tracy Letts began drafting a play about revisionist history, political power, and intolerance. He did not consider The Minutes to be about Trump (since most of the play had been written before the results of the election), but he did view it as a meditation on “the way we conduct our politics in this country” and on the importance of coming to terms with our collective past. The play’s unusual production history, however, enabled it to span both of Trump’s presidential campaigns. The Minutes premiered at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago on November 9, 2017, and even though it began previews on Broadway in 2020, its scheduled opening was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The play would not get its official New York City premiere until the Studio 54 production in April 2022. Although Letts admits that “it did take some doing to not change the play and make it about Trump, in response to Trump,” the play’s political relevance today is more striking (and disturbing) than ever. When viewed alongside Trump’s efforts to reshape American education and to rewrite history, as articulated most explicitly in the 1776 Report and Curriculum, The Minutes offers a powerful reminder of the need for an inclusive, nuanced understanding of history. For Letts, everyone—every nation, every town, every community—has a responsibility for its past and for confronting it honestly. This process begins not by erasing what is uncomfortable and shameful, but by including a range of voices to address past wrongs, to recognize the richness of native cultures, and to fill in the types of gaps found in the 1776 Curriculum. Ultimately, through images of erasure and loss, The Minutes offers a damning portrait of political power as stemming not from truth but from the power to shape and control the historical narrative.
    (Text for course: Tracy Letts’ THE MINUTES ISBN-13 978-0573707186)

    Details:
    Donald Trump, Political Power, and Rewriting History in Tracy Letts' The Minutes
    Professor Thomas Fahy
    1 session: Monday, June 1
    10:00 AM-12:00 PM
    Fee: $35

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    About the lecturer(s)

    Thomas Fahy

    Thomas Fahy, a nonfiction writer, novelist, and professor of literature and creative writing, has published 19 books. His most recent, The Life of the Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald, was released in November of 2025. He has also published essays on everything from Paris Hilton and 1980s vampire films to contemporary television and theater. His works have been translated into several languages, and he has been interviewed by the Associated Press, Salon, and other publications, as well as radio hosts in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Malaysia. He was recently featured in a documentary about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood for Arte Television and on the BBC radio program Literary Pursuits. When he is not writing, Dr. Fahy performs regularly as a classical pianist with the New York Piano Society and has appeared in recent concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and other venues in New York City. He has a degree in music from the University of California, Davis, and he previously served as an adjunct professor of piano at UNC, Chapel Hill.

    Lecture Details

    Program
    Summer 2026
    Sessions
    1 lecture(s)
    Day & Time
    Monday, 10:00-12 noon
    Date(s)
    Jun 01, 2026