For the year following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, new membership in the Friends of the University Theatre at Kansas University plummeted.

“People, in general, were not willing to spend money and time on frivolous things like the arts,” says John Staniunas, director of University Theatre.

Now, he says, things are different.

“It’s not like life is regular again,” he says, “but people have made the decision that life goes on, and art is an important aspect of your life.”

In the time since Sept. 11, 2001, the arts – in nearly every medium – have gone from being attacked to going on the offensive itself, often taking a stand for the protection of civil liberties and against war.

And where things go from Monday’s five-year anniversary of the attacks depends largely on the political situation in the United States and whether there’s another attack on the country.

Activist art

It was late one night, and her family was returning home to the sight of a police helicopter shining a bright spotlight on a house. The light was wide enough to capture more than the intended target.

It was then that Lora Jost realized the analogy.

The Patriot Act, she figured, and other government actions intended to find terrorists but also monitor law-abiding citizens, were like that bright light.

So Jost, a Lawrence artist, decided to create a collage based on that theme.

“My feeling was getting caught in the searchlight – the innocent getting caught in the searchlight, and how that feels,” she says.

She thinks visual artists are focused more now on the aftermath of the attacks politically, and less on the attacks themselves.

“I think it has to do more with what’s happening in our government,” she says. “Of course, if there was another attack, people might think this kind of extra surveillance is necessary.

“As the public seems like they have less support for the war, there’s been more of a rise in activist art. There’s more of a comfort level.”

Different reactions

Steve Goddard, senior curator at KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, says the 9/11 attacks had an impact on nearly every artist, even if that impact was to simply make a new commitment not to let terrorism change their art.

“I think it’s hard to imagine anyone going through that whole period and feeling that you haven’t changed in some way,” he says. “Some artists I know couldn’t continue their work right away, and they consciously stopped their work. Others changed their work, so they’re marking the events personally, in a meaningful way.”

Nationally, some artists chose to be explicit about their references to 9/11. Richard Mock, a former editorial cartoonist for The New York Times, did a series of linocuts about the events following the attacks. Richard Serra, another New York artist, did a piece in reaction to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Goddard says the attacks will be the benchmark by which other similar events – both the attacks themselves and the reaction to them – will be judged going into the future.

“I grew up in the ’60s, and at the time, it was just what was going on in the ’60s,” Goddard says. “We did not realize how meaningful it was until 20 years later.”

“(9/11) was a tumultuous event,” he adds. “It’s something we will measure things by for a long time.”

Literary impact

Sara Paretsky was nervous, standing in front of a crowd of 500 at the Toledo, Ohio, public library.

It was the Friday night before the United States invaded Iraq, and she was about to give a lecture on the erosion of civil liberties. It was titled “Speech in the Age of Silence.”

“The library told me people didn’t want to hear this kind of thing, that I needed to give light, entertaining anecdotes of my experiences as a writer,” Paretsky remembers. “My knees were shaking so badly I had to hold onto the podium.”

Paretsky, a nationally known crime-fiction writer who grew up in Lawrence and graduated from both Lawrence High School and KU, says she’s seen 9/11’s impact on fiction writing. She wrote “Blacklist,” which dealt with the issue of civil liberties in the post-9/11 era.

“It’s hard to say there’s a trend in fiction,” Paretsky says, “but one of the things in my mind that has happened in the last five or six years is the hallmark of the American character was a kind of optimism that bordered on arrogance. But we felt we could move into any situation and solve a problem. Now, we’ve lost that optimism.”

But now, she says, writers, TV stations and movies are trying to battle that.

“There’s a tremendous amount of World War II movies being shown,” she says, “not to glorify war, but to hark back to a time when people thought America was the good guy, and could only do good.”

She’s worried that major corporations, distributing the majority of books and movies, will quash some artists’ creativity.

“What you’ll see is narrower and narrower kinds of visions and statements in fiction and film, because in both the conglomerates rule,” she says. “They get the deciding vote in what gets published and what gets filmed and what gets distributed. It makes people very reluctant to take chances with what they say or what they do.”

Current events

Staniunas, the University Theatre director, isn’t worried about that happening on the stage. He says activism is one of the foundations of theater.

“Theater is going to approach the issues in the same way theater is always trying to do – exposing truths,” he says.

In the world of theater, that has meant three things, Staniunas says, which in some ways represents the political divide in the country:

¢ One is a resurgence in patriotic plays such as “George M!,” which deals with the life of composer George M. Cohan, and “South Pacific,” which is set during World War II.

¢ Two, more activist plays have been written, such as “Army of One,” an award-winning work by former KU student and playwright Zacory N. Boatright. The story chronicles an Iraq war veteran who struggled to reconcile his memories with his everyday life when he returns home.

¢ Three, there’s new light shed on old favorites, such as Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” or Brian Friel’s “Translations.” Or the song in “The Fantasticks,” that says, “Try to remember the kind of September / When life was slow and oh so mellow.”

Since 9/11, memberships for University Theatre have gotten back to their previous levels. Likewise, the Lawrence Arts Center reports that enrollment in classes, which dipped significantly in fall 2001, have rebounded.

No matter what happens in the political or war situation around the world, Staniunas says, the public can count on artists to respond.

“I think artists respond to whatever is current,” Staniunas says.