Politics & Power Quote by Helen Gahagan

Gahagan frames politics not as a glamorous pivot from the stage, but as the emergency exit an artist takes when the building starts to burn. The line is built on a deliberately selfish-sounding premise - an actor worried about losing stages - yet its real maneuver is to smuggle in a collective warning: when civic life collapses, culture is not a luxury that survives on the side. It is one of the first things to be shuttered, censored, or repurposed.

The intent is twofold. First, it rebukes the comforting myth that art can stay "above" politics. Second, it makes a strategically accessible case for engagement: you do not need to be a policy wonk to have a stake; you just need to care about the conditions that make any public life possible. Her phrase "if we all sat back and did nothing" is doing moral work. Passivity is treated as a choice with consequences, not a neutral posture.

The subtext lands hardest in the 1930s and 40s, when fascism and war showed how quickly regimes can turn theaters into propaganda rooms or close them entirely. As an actress turned congresswoman and outspoken anti-fascist, Gahagan is also defending the legitimacy of performers as political actors: not dabblers, but witnesses whose livelihood depends on freedom of assembly, speech, and imagination. The rhetorical trick is neat: she starts with the stage, and ends up arguing for democracy.