The theater community frequently confronts the preconception that it should merely provide entertainment and not engage in political commentary. The playwright Harold Pinter raised eyebrows last fall when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and delivered an acceptance speech denouncing U.S. foreign policy. More recent events, closer to home, are also noteworthy. You can still visit the Nobel Web site to read or watch Pinter’s speech anyway.

This year’s theater season in New York has seen an odd confluence of theater and politics.

At the end of August, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, attended a performance of Monty Python’s “Spamalot” on Broadway while New Orleans was sinking underwater. This month sees the opening at the Public Theater of a David Hare docudrama entitled “Stuff Happens,” in which Rice appears as a character.

Is theater an escape from world problems? Or is it a way of engaging with them? What should it be?

The Anglo-Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The artist is the creator of beautiful things.” Going even further, he proclaimed, “No artist has ethical sympathies.” So we can place him in the “escapist” camp.

But the Brazilian director and theorist Augusto Boal argues, “all theatre is necessarily political because all the activities of man are political and theatre is one of them. Those who try to separate theatre from politics try to lead us into error — and this is a political attitude.”

It is safe to say that any piece of theater exists somewhere on a continuum between these points of view. But it is the rare performance that is either purely aesthetic or purely political.

When she attended “Spamalot,” Rice was booed by some of the play’s spectators, but the show went on, as we say it must. Nevertheless those looking to use the theater as an escape into an apolitical world of “beautiful things” got more than they bargained for on the night when Rice was in attendance.

“Stuff Happens” is a play about the run-up to the Iraq war. Portions of its dialogue were taken verbatim from press conferences and interviews. In fact, its title is a famous (or infamous) Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld quote regarding looting in Baghdad.

But press conferences are rarely compelling drama, and a good play cannot simply restate what anyone can read in an online transcript. Accordingly, Hare’s play is not stenography. Some of the dialogue, Hare says, is “pure guesswork.” In other words, storytelling, fiction and “art” have intervened.

It may seem odd timing that a play opening in New York should look back to the beginning of the Iraq war. As I write this, though, it is just over a week since The New Yorker published an article claiming that the Bush administration is planning the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

It would not be unreasonable to think that we might soon be fighting yet another war. You might take this brief window of opportunity to express your political view, either through artistic expression or overt political dialogue. You might also turn away and seek solace in beautiful distractions — if you can. Both responses are perfectly common and perfectly reasonable.

That “beautiful things” might become tainted with politics is not an annoyance. It is a luxury that not everyone has. Some people on this planet lead lives in which, as Wilde wrote, “all art is quite useless.” They would be happy to have politics enter their lives in the form of theater and not in the form of bombs. Thankfully, our situation is not that dire — yet. But stuff can happen.