Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater

Straight from Off-Broadway comes a timely and important play — Eric Bentley's Are You Now or Have Your Ever Been?, directed by Tony Award winner Anna D. Shapiro. This electrifying docudrama drops you into the tense world of the 1940s House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings, where fame offered no protection and political pressure could end a career.

Using only the original transcripts, the play features the words of artists like Arthur Miller, Jerome Robbins, Paul Robeson, Elia Kazan, Lillian Hellman, Abe Burrows, and Lionel Stander as they faced impossible choices: defend their integrity, protect their careers, or betray their peers. And yet the probing, chilling questions posed by the committee are as powerful as the testimonies themselves, revealing a climate of intimidation and moral conflict that resonates far beyond its time.