By Leslie Swackhamer, Executive Director, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and Jay Wahl, Executive Director, the Flynn
We began with an impossibly large question: What is the current state of democracy in America?
But underneath it was a smaller and much more personal one: What can we do? What should we do?
What can a couple of Vermonters who run a performing arts organization and a playwriting prize do? Some days, hiding under the bed seems like a reasonable option. The world feels frightening. The 2026 midterm elections are approaching. Our country seems increasingly divided not only about politics, but about reality itself.
We’re not politicians or constitutional scholars. But we believe in the power of theater to bring people together, to ask difficult questions, and to help us see the world through someone else’s eyes. That’s what we have to offer.
So we teamed up, leaning into Susan Smith Blackburn’s belief that both our stories and our civic life are richer with women’s voices at the center. And we invited some of the most influential playwrights of our time to take on this question with us.
We thought maybe six or seven playwrights would say yes to an invitation to write short plays or monologues. Instead, our invitation opened a floodgate. Thirty-four plays by award-winning women+ playwrights make up the project. They are funny and furious, intimate and unruly, historical and speculative. They contradict one another. Some make us uncomfortable. Others make us laugh. All ask us to pay attention.
Together, these plays do not argue for a single point of view or prescribe a single course of action. They offer something more interesting: an invitation to consider perspectives we might not otherwise encounter.
That is why we’re producing all of them throughout a full day at the Flynn on October 24.
A play can’t encompass democracy. A conversation won’t allay all our fears. But something can happen between people who gather to listen to a story that would not have happened otherwise. That is a critical beginning.
And we didn’t want that conversation to happen only in Burlington.
We’ve invited theaters, schools, colleges and universities, libraries, museums, community organizations, and independent artists to bring these plays into their own communities across the United States and beyond. More than 100 groups have answered the call, with free performances planned around the country and the globe in the weeks leading up to the midterms. We are approaching our goal of participation in every state and Washington, D.C.
Some will present a single play around a kitchen table. Others will gather hundreds of people in a theater. Each community will decide which stories matter most to them and what conversations they want to have.
There is something particularly meaningful to us about this national conversation beginning in Vermont, a state whose motto, Freedom and Unity, holds two ideas that can be difficult to reconcile. We believe the arts can help us practice both.
The election will pass. The arguments that seemed all-consuming in 2026 will give way to others. And these plays will still be here. They will be available in an anthology, though that collection is not a time capsule containing the correct thoughts about American democracy in 2026. It is a record of artists being brave enough to look directly at their moment and make something.
Democracy requires more than agreement. It asks us to share a public life with people who see the world differently. To listen, to question, to disagree, and to remain in conversation even when it would be easier to walk away.
We can’t promise that 34 plays will change the course of American democracy.
But we can invite people into a room together.
And right now, that feels like something very worth doing.
To learn more and reserve free tickets for the Saturday, October 24 world-premiere of all 34 Women+ on the Edge of Democracy plays at the Flynn in Burlington, VT, visit: https://www.flynnvt.org/see-and-do/democracy/.
To explore the full Women+ on the Edge of Democracy project, visit: https://www.democracy.flynnvt.org/.
