The Stage Is Set: A Coup in Three Acts

The Art of Resistance, Chapter 7

The greenroom of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre was no longer just a backstage retreat—it had become the underground war room of a resistance that history had already seen once before. High windows rattled against February's bitter wind, the sound mixing with the distant hum of construction from the main stage. A thick tension hung in the air, along with Énigme d’Or—one of Vivian LaFarge's signature scents a gift from her mother, created especially for her from Floris of London, its blend of gardenia and magnolia with subtle notes of bergamot unchanged since her mother Marguerite's days in the French Resistance—mingling with the musty sweetness of aging velvet and wood.

Few people ventured to this particular greenroom anymore. Hidden away in the theatre's east wing, past the maze of narrow corridors lined with decades of show posters, it had become a sanctuary known only to the cast, crew, and most importantly, to Vivian herself. The room's worn art deco moldings and vintage bronze wall sconces spoke to the building's 1920s origins, while the faded velvet curtains—deep burgundy, now more memory than material—had witnessed countless opening nights and closing calls. She had spent decades in this space, first as a young director alongside Claire's grandmother Marie, her closest friend and confidante until Marie's passing last spring. Now it served as their war room, the ghosts of past performances and whispered confidences bearing witness to a different kind of drama unfolding.

Through the frosted glass of the high windows, the city beyond appeared as a series of hostile shadows. Police sirens wailed in the distance, and the occasional thump of helicopter blades cut through the winter air. But here, surrounded by the theater's embracing warmth, the old radiator clicking and hissing in the corner like a drowsy guardian, they had carved out their refuge.

Riley sat at the center table in a 1940s Schiaparelli suit, the surrealist buttons shaped like tiny bronze keys that caught the light. Her oxblood T-strap heels, scored from a vintage shop in the Haight, drummed a quiet rhythm against the floor as she scrolled through article after article, green eyes flickering with barely contained fire. She had read everything. Twice.

Across from her sat Vivian LaFarge, years of elegance and quiet authority wrapped in a perfectly tailored Lanvin suit. She sat straight-backed and tall, her white hair swept back in elaborate twists that spoke of old-world sophistication, her silver-headed cane resting against the table like a conductor's baton. The emerald-and-diamond brooch her mother had smuggled out of Paris caught the light as her elegant fingers traced patterns on the table's surface, each movement deliberate as a conductor's gesture.

Mark, a stagehand who had become more of a soldier than a technician, leaned against the wall, arms crossed, face grim. Claire, streaming in from New York, listened, her expression tight as her laptop cast a bluish glow on her face.

Claire's face filled the laptop screen propped at the end of the table, the dim lighting of Les Deux Canards casting shadows across her face. A long scar traced her jawline—legacy of a protest gone wrong—and her eyes, too knowing for her years, darted between the others as she balanced a serving tray just out of frame. The restaurant's night crowd provided perfect cover for their conversation, just as it had when her grandmother Marie and Vivian had planned their first experimental theatre productions decades ago, their shared passion for both art and justice forming a bond that would span generations. The winter storm that had swept through New York that morning cast occasional shadows across Claire's feed as snow fell past the restaurant's windows.

Vivian LaFarge stood and slowly walked to the end of the table, placing her hands on the old wooden top as she looked at each member of the gathered group, the glow of candlelight reflecting off her mother's brooch. She did not rush. A lifetime of experience had taught her that true power lay in the spaces between words, in the measured pause that let a room lean in.

"They thought they could control him," she said, her Parisian-accented English slicing through the quiet. "The billionaires of America believe they can purchase power, just as the industrialists of Germany once believed they could control Hitler. But power is a beast that does not obey its buyer. It devours."

She tapped her hands lightly against the old wooden table.

"Musk is not merely a financier like the others. He controls the infrastructure itself—the satellites, the networks, the energy grids. While Trump believes he reigns, while he demands fealty from those who once thought they owned him, Musk waits. A predator in the dark."

She looked around the room, her gaze landing on each of them.

"We resist. Not with guns, nor riots, nor speeches on the Senate floor. The age of open defiance has arrived but so has the era of quiet resistance. The art of sabotage in proven acts. The art of the long game." She paused. "Robert Reich wrote about April 19th being the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. Harold Meyerson suggests that on that day we stage massive peaceful protests in every city and town—crowds of Americans celebrating the anti-monarchical uprising of 1775 and pledging their allegiance to that heritage by denouncing Trump's increasingly autocratic rule."

"Vivian, where did you hear that?" asked Claire in a quizzical manner.

Vivian retorted, "I read Robert's Substack, of course. Don't you?" Claire squirmed in her chair appropriately chastened while everyone else muffled giggles and looked at one another whispering "Who knew Vivian reads Substack..."

Riley slammed the laptop shut. "Alright."

Mark blinked. "Alright?"

Riley looked around the room, a new fire in her expression. "It's happening. The coup isn't 'coming'—it's here. And what do we have?" She gestured around them. "A stage. A theater. An audience. And if history tells us anything?" She looked to Vivian now. "That's enough."

Vivian's gaze sharpened. "A coded performance."

Riley grinned. "Exactly."

Vivian's voice took on the weight of history. "During the Nazi occupation, theaters weren't just stages—they were battlegrounds. The people inside them were fighters, saboteurs, spies. In 1944, Jean Anouilh's Antigone was performed in Paris. On the surface? A Greek tragedy. But to the audience? A battle cry. The tyrant Creon represented the Vichy regime, and Antigone? The Resistance. The Nazis let it play, not realizing they were endorsing their own downfall."

"Cabarets were weapons," she continued, her smile sharp. "In Berlin, a comedian named Werner Finck mocked the Nazis to their faces. He was careful—just vague enough. For a while, he got away with it. Then, one day, they dragged him off to Sachsenhausen. But for months, he kept audiences laughing at their oppressors. And that? That was power."

"They used art as a weapon," Claire whispered.

Vivian nodded. "And theaters became underground hubs." She tapped her cane against the floor. "Dressing rooms, trapdoors, orchestra pits—they were all used to smuggle intelligence, hide documents, shelter the hunted. At the Comédie-Française, actors passed coded messages in scripts. At the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, Resistance fighters hid documents inside set pieces. And in Amsterdam? Theater costumers forged fake identity papers."

"And when the Nazis took over theaters, do you think they obeyed?" Vivian's eyes burned. "No. Actors forgot their lines. Stagehands misplaced props. Lighting technicians cut the power. In Brussels, Resistance members working in theaters shut off the power during Nazi propaganda films—and blamed it on 'technical difficulties.'"

"Jesus. They fought back," Riley breathed, hands curling into fists.

"They fought with what they had," Vivian said. "And so will we."

"A play within a play," Riley explained, her excitement growing. "They'll think it's glorifying the regime. But to our people? It'll be a message. A blueprint. A way to fight back. We bury the real message in the subtext."

"'The Stage Is Set: A Coup in Three Acts,'" Vivian announced, her cane tapping three distinct times against the floor.

"The first act is the world as it is—the rising danger. The regime in power, the rules tightening, the noose closing in. The illusion of normalcy," Vivian explained. "The second act is the conflict, as the resistance takes form. And the third?" Her fingers curled around her cane. "The rebellion begins in full force."

Outside, the sounds of construction continued, but inside the greenroom of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, another kind of building had begun—one that would have made Marguerite LaFarge and Marie Dumont proud. The high windows shuddered against another gust of winter wind, and somewhere in the darkness of the theater's labyrinthine corridors, a door slammed shut, the sound echoing off the century-old brick walls. Beyond their sanctuary, the city grew colder and harder by the day, but here, in this room steeped in history and defiance, the warmth of resistance burned bright.

Vivian rose, every inch the daughter of Marguerite LaFarge, resistance fighter and master of bureaucratic warfare. "They'll think they're watching their triumph," she said, her cultured accent carrying decades of refined danger. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The Nazis feared theater for a reason. And Trump's regime? They won't see it coming until the final act. Draw up flyers to be handed out about the play at the rallies—the demonstrations on April 19th. We will seem like any other group trying to reach a lot of people quickly. Nobody will suspect a bunch of Gen Zers handing out flyers to be part of any underground resistance group putting on a play to unite people to dismantle the Trump presidency."