The show goes on. On Sunday, in a bizarre bit of diplomacy that had been proposed on Twitter just a day before, President Trump met the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, at the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula. Beyond the D.M.Z., which is four kilometres wide, the two Koreas are technically at war, which is why some twenty-eight thousand American military personnel are still based in South Korea; soldiers, including Americans, have died in flashes of violence in and around the heavily fortified strip of land. Trump nevertheless became the first sitting U.S. President to step into North Korea, the most authoritarian state on earth, which is led by a third-generation tyrant.

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“Good to see you again,” a beaming Kim said, as he greeted the President. “I never expected to meet you in this place.” Trump’s overture to Kim in a tweet on Saturday was, he said, a “very courageous and determined act.”

Trump responded, “Big moment, big moment.” He boasted that “tremendous things” are happening, even though no tangible progress has been made on North Korea’s denuclearization since the leaders’ first summit, a year ago, in Singapore. The second summit, in Hanoi, which took place in February, was a debacle. Trump walked out of those talks. The North Koreans grew cold on diplomacy. The D.M.Z. photo op appears to have been designed to help Kim save face. With cameras rolling, Trump told Kim, “We met and we liked each other from day one, and that was very important.”

The single, modest agreement that emerged from the encounter, which lasted fifty-three minutes, was to resume working group talks next month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in South Korea. Asked if the hastily organized rendezvous (which must have driven the Secret Service nuts) was a gamble, Pompeo responded, “It worked,” and then laughed. But he also conceded that the two sides had not yet made any progress on the issue at the heart of the negotiations—defining what “denuclearization” means. The term was the centerpiece of a modest agreement in Singapore. The United States wants North Korea to surrender all of its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, along with its ballistic missiles, and end all research-and-development programs. In the past, North Korea has called for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the Peninsula and a pledge that no nuclear weapons will ever threaten the North.

The resumption of talks was widely welcomed. But analysts with long experience in dealing with North Korea were skeptical about the prospects. “This is diplomacy as a reality show—devoid of substance, purely driven by the pursuit of faux-historic photo ops,” Abraham Denmark, a former East Asia specialist at the Pentagon who now directs the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told me. “By casting a potential summit meeting in the D.M.Z. as a last-minute opportunity to just say ‘Hi,’ President Trump can minimize any expectations of tangible progress but maintain the sense that diplomacy with Kim Jong Un continues.”

At the D.M.Z., Kim agreed to do only what he had already promised in Singapore last year: allow more talks between their teams. “Some will see that as success, others as merely another iteration in the ‘Waiting for Godot’ scenario that represents negotiations with North Korea,” Bruce Klingner, a former C.I.A. deputy division chief for Korea who is now at the Heritage Foundation, told me. “Trump has reaped the fruits of diplomacy without having tilled the soil of making actual progress.” The President has touted progress in the return of American servicemen’s remains from the war, the release of American detainees, and a moratorium on both nuclear and long-range missile tests. “Each of those is good but none is unique, and every one was achieved in greater number or significance during previous U.S. Administrations,” Klingner said.

The impending talks will buy both leaders more time. Trump can counter criticism that he has made little progress in foreign policy, notably in North Korea, his biggest gamble, as the U.S. election cycle begins. Kim “can claim a similar public-relations and propaganda victory,” Frank Aum, a former senior Pentagon adviser, who is now at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said. “Each meeting he has with the U.S. President legitimizes the North Korean leader.”

Trump’s embrace of Kim has helped improve the profile of North Korea, which for decades has been an international pariah, among the world’s major powers. Since the President’s second meeting with Kim, in Hanoi, other world leaders have held their own summits with the leader. On June 21st, President Xi Jinping made the first visit to North Korea by a Chinese leader in fourteen years—ever since North Korea began testing nuclear weapons. In May, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, hosted Kim at their first-ever summit, in Vladivostok. “The international coalition to ‘maximize pressure’ on North Korea has dissipated, and Kim today has built significant diplomatic relations with Seoul, Beijing, and Moscow,” Denmark said.

A lot of work remains to get beyond the gamesmanship that has typified the first year of the Trump-Kim flirtation. “If they address the core issues of denuclearization and sanctions relief, rather than just summit logistics or other lower-hanging fruit, then we have the real chance of reaching a breakthrough agreement,” Aum said.

After the talks, Trump said that he was in no hurry. “Speed is not the object,” he told reporters. He described the challenges as “very big stuff—pretty complicated, but not as complicated as people think.” He used similar language in pledging to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, an initiative that stalled after the rollout of an economic plan during a conference in Bahrain this month.

Letting diplomacy drag out carries dangers. “North Korea has presumably used the past twelve months, since Singapore, to continue building its nuclear weapons and ballistic-missiles programs,” Denmark told me. The one bit of progress often cited by Trump is that North Korea has not tested the weaponry that it is building. Many experts believe that Kim will never completely surrender the programs that effectively guarantee the dynasty’s survival. The most viable outcome, some analysts suggest, may be North Korea surrendering some of its bombs and missiles and then freezing its programs, with extensive international verification.

But North Korea’s commitment to diplomacy even on simple issues, such as returning the remains of American service personnel who died during the Korean War, has been put in doubt. More than five thousand are still missing in action in North Korea. (Others are still missing in South Korea). In July, 2018, shortly after the Singapore summit, North Korea returned fifty-five boxes of American remains, then abruptly stopped, despite repeated requests from Washington to fulfill its promise. Over the years, the United States has paid millions of dollars to fund North Korean teams to find American bodies. The boxes returned do not necessarily even represent one body. “Until all are identified, we will not know how commingled the boxes are,” a Pentagon spokesman told me, on Sunday. “Of those, we have identified six service members.” In the past, forensic experts have found animal bones included among returned remains.

En route back to Washington, Trump tweeted, “Leaving South Korea after a wonderful meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!” But, still, no concrete progress on wresting the world’s deadliest weapons from the world’s most brutal regime.

In the fifth minute of the United States’ World Cup quarter-final game against France, the French defender Griedge Mbock Bathy pulled down the American striker Alex Morgan outside the penalty area and was shown a yellow card. Megan Rapinoe took the ensuing free kick and delivered a low, hard shot that bent around a small wall of French defenders, dipped through a sea of legs, and slipped past the goalkeeper, who appeared not even to have seen the ball. Rapinoe turned, trotted toward a corner of the field, and presented herself to the crowd. As her teammates leapt on her back, she held the pose: arms outstretched, chest out, chin up. She looked like an opera diva, about to drop into a curtsy during a curtain call. It would be an understatement to say that Rapinoe has a flair for the dramatic. No athlete I can think of right now has such a perfect sense of herself on a stage—nor such a command of it.

Rapinoe, the captain of the U.S. women’s national team, is accustomed to the spotlight, on and off the field. At the 2011 quarter-finals, Rapinoe sent up a perfect high cross that Abby Wambach headed home during stoppage time, one of the most memorable goals in World Cup history. Rapinoe became the first white professional athlete to take a knee during the national anthem in support of the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protest of systemic racism and police brutality, risking her spot on the national team. (U.S. Soccer later instituted a rule requiring all players to stand.) Rapinoe has posed with her wife, the W.N.B.A. player Sue Bird, nude in ESPN the Magazine’s Body Issue. Her freewheeling play, precise footwork, and uncanny vision facilitate the flow of the United States’ offense. Rapinoe has become the most consistent and articulate spokesperson for the women’s national team in the players’ battle for equal pay. And Rapinoe has scored every goal for the United States during the knockout rounds: two on Tuesday, against Spain, and two on Friday, against France.

That, of course, is not all that Rapinoe has got attention for lately. Earlier this week, the soccer magazine Eight by Eight released a video in which Rapinoe was asked whether she was excited about visiting the White House after the World Cup. “I’m not going to the fucking White House,” she said. She’d said this before. “I am not going to fake it, hobnob with the President, who is clearly against so many of the things that I am [for] and so many of the things that I actually am,” Rapinoe told Sports Illustrated. “I have no interest in extending our platform to him.” But, this time, the world was paying attention (11.5 million views as of Saturday morning)—and Donald Trump eventually weighed in on Twitter, criticizing her lack of patriotism, throwing in dog whistles about black unemployment and the N.B.A. “owner” controversy, and inviting the U.S. women’s national team to the White House, win or lose.

This did not go over well; first, Trump tweeted at the wrong handle, and then some of Rapinoe’s teammates backed her up. “In regards to the ‘President’s’ tweet today, I know women who you cannot control or grope anger you, but I stand by [Rapinoe],” Ali Krieger wrote in one response. (Bonus points for her ironic quote marks around the word “President.”) “I think we all support Megan,” Jill Ellis, the team’s coach, said more diplomatically. “She knows that.”

By now, the U.S. players and coaches are used to speaking frankly about issues that other teams, in other sports, played by another gender, would consider a “distraction” before a big game—and the quarter-final against France was the biggest game of all. It is not an exaggeration to say that the match between the host nation and the United States was the most anticipated contest in the history of women’s soccer, a showcase of how far the game has come. Record-setting television audiences were expected; tickets were reselling for thousands of dollars. France, like several other countries, had banned women’s soccer in the middle of the twentieth century, but, in recent years, participation has exploded on every level, and its club teams have become models of professionalism and excellence. The United States had not beaten France in the teams’ last three meetings. But France has never won a major international title, and, as the host nation, it was under enormous pressure to match the success of the men’s team, which won the 2018 World Cup—but with the added need to validate France’s investment in the women’s game. Like most women’s teams, it was tasked not only with winning but justifying its own existence.

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For the United States, the stakes were just as high. Anything less than a title for the defending champions would be considered a failure—at least in one sense. But Rapinoe, who turns thirty-four next week, has proved that the game isn’t limited to what happens on the field, and what happens on the field isn’t merely a game. No matter the outcome for the U.S. team, her virtuoso performance will reverberate.

“In those years, our thought processes were becoming so magical, so paranoid, that to imagine writing a play about this environment was like trying to pick one’s teeth with a ball of wool.” This is how Arthur Miller describes the complexities of his early attempts to write “The Crucible,” which premièred at the height of the McCarthy era. Miller’s play spoke to a generation that was living in a kind of paralysis—its members fearful that, if they spoke up, they might be labelled subversive or unpatriotic. In that sense, his work, like so many remarkable dramas before it, offered a revealing and candid look at the price of human frailty.

This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces that explore the lives of dramatists and the world of theatre. Truman Capote travels to Leningrad and describes the events leading up to the Soviet première of the American opera “Porgy and Bess.” Wolcott Gibbs reviews the original Broadway staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Kenneth Tynan writes about the original productions of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.” In “The Celluloid Brasserie,” Andy Logan visits Tennessee Williams and asks him about his hit play “The Glass Menagerie.” Larissa MacFarquhar profiles the playwright Edward Albee, and Hilton Als explores the world of Ntozake Shange. In “Beyond Nelly,” John Lahr chronicles the making of Tony Kushner’s epic drama “Angels in America.” Michael Schulman profiles Lynn Nottage and considers her tough yet empathetic portraits of America. Finally, Janet Malcolm traces the journeys of Anton Chekhov and revisits his plays. We hope that you enjoy these glimpses into the nature of dramatic artistry.

“Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible’ ”

“I am not sure what ‘The Crucible’ is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties.”

“Porgy and Bess in Russia”

“The theatre grew quieter than a hens’ roost at sunset as the audience settled back, confident that now the curtain would rise and reveal what it had paid its rubles to see—‘Porgy and Bess.’ ”

“Lower Depths, Southern Style”

“ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is a brilliant, implacable play about the disintegration of a woman, or, if you like, of a society.”

“Ireland and Points West”

“The supreme virtue of ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ Lorraine Hansberry’s new play, is its proud, joyous proximity to its source, which is life as the dramatist has lived it.”

“Passion Plays”

“If there is a single theme that runs through Edward Albee’s work, it is the importance of being open to a full consciousness of life, with all the social and emotional risk that that entails.”

“The Celluloid Brassière”

“For a journalist unwilling to interview Tennessee Williams, who wrote the latest hit show, ‘The Glass Menagerie,’ the only alternative is giving up his press card.”

“Color Vision”

“For the first time, we were being shown a world of unimpeachable cool not as it played itself out around St. Mark’s Place but on Broadway, in a ‘choreopoem’ by Ntozake Shange called ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.’ ”

“Beyond Nelly”

“ ‘Angels in America’ was now officially in the world, covered more or less in glory. It was a victory for Tony Kushner, for theatre, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty.”

“Three Journeys”

“If the trip to Sakhalin did not yield a work of literary distinction, its personal (and eventual literary) significance for Anton Chekhov was momentous. He needed to go on a journey.”

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“The Listener”

“The playwright Lynn Nottage, who has thick dreads and a warm, warbling voice, has built a career on making invisible people visible.”