Creativity, Innovation and Cultural Exchange
America should remain open to international artists and cultural exchange
Theatres across Europe and the United States have received a charge of creative energy in the last few years. This month, Timofey Kulyabin’s experimental, multimodal adaptation of Hedda Gabler at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia, Bulgaria. The award-winning 40-year-old Russian established himself as a leading stage director over a decade ago with innovative and provocative adaptations of European classics at the Red Torch Theatre in Novosibirsk and in Moscow. Kulyabin, who denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, left the country in 2022. Other leading theatrical figures such as Kirill Serebrennikov and Dmitry Krymov left Russia around this time due to growing censorship, hostility to free expression, and increasing abuse of the judicial system to punish and threaten artists. These stage directors, along with many theatre artists who fled political repression in neighboring Belarus, had found creative freedom and community in Europe and, until recently, the United States.
The American stage has long been the beneficiary of Eastern European artists and producers who sought safe harbor and artistic freedom. Balanchine. Baryshnikov. The G and M of MGM.
As a theatre historian with a specialization in Eastern European theatre, I’ve been charting the impact of Eastern European émigré artists on American theatre as they fled dictatorships and oppression since 1891. A steady stream of actors, directors, writers, composers, designers, dancers, choreographers have brought vibrancy and formal experimentation to our stages and screens for well over a century. America has long afforded an opportunity for artists to find their footing, present their work, and found training programs and companies that have shaped generations of American artists. Most recently, one of the world’s most celebrated and visionary directors, Dmitry Krymov established a Theatre Laboratory in New York City.
The arts, like other industries in the United States, have always benefitted from attracting the most innovative global talents. But will this last? Or is a reversal imminent?
Concerns continue to grow about whether the United States is hospitable to foreign nationals and whether it is committed to the freedom of speech and artistic expression. H1 visa denials were at their height in 2018, under the first Trump Administration, and recent travel bans and proclamations are concerning for those who wish to work or study in the United States. Revoking or denying visas based on the concept that “United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles,” a phrase used in executive orders in January and June 2025, allows broad leeway for interpretation – making a penalty plausible for almost any perceived critique of the US, past or present.
This broad language is disconcerting. I, myself, was banned from Russia in 2024, along with other American academics and journalists for alleged “Russophobia.” Will Americanophobia be charged against any artist or writer who doesn’t toe the invisible, ever-moving party line of this administration? We’ve seen the charge of “UnAmerican” do much destructive work historically.
While creating an uncertain and unwelcome environment to foreign nationals, the current U.S. Administration’s policies, such as defunding research and cancelling ideologically misaligned programming at the Kennedy Center, some American academics and artists are seeking residency and work abroad. High profile figures who write about anti-authoritarianism, such as Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley, formerly of Yale University, have opted to remain in Toronto, which has become a destination for a number of American artists and intellectuals. Toronto Life refers to it as its “brain gain.”
American education and arts and entertainment are among our greatest exports. Cultural exchange has played a key role in our ability to innovate. Threats to academic freedom and artistic expression in the United States weaken our potential for innovation and ingenuity, contemplation and public debate, and robust and thriving communities. The exodus of artists and intellectuals, both American and foreign born – like Orson Welles, Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin – and the silencing and sidelining of many during the McCarthy era curtailed the nation’s creativity.
A nation depleted of creativity presents itself only in the choreographic uniformity of military parades and the imposed zealotry of staged political rallies. Empty signs and false symbols. Expressionless faces and counterfeit smiles.
As June 14 made clear, we aren’t there yet. But we’ll continue to need a surge and surplus of creativity and public debate: a messy, multimodal, polyphonic cacophony of democracy.
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