HowlRound defines commons-based approaches as practices that promote relationality, cooperation, horizontal and decentralized decision-making and networks, bottom-up activity, and peer-to-peer sharing of infrastructure, material goods, knowledge, and ideas. Content in this section directly addresses practices of commoning from around the field. Dive in with essays on the promise of the commons, the birth of a climate commons, and how a commons becomes a selection committee.
The Artistic Caucus: How Four Theatres Joined Forces to Disrupt Curatorial Practices
13 July 2023
Lauren Halvorsen reports on the origins, development, and learnings of the Artistic Caucus, a collaborative initiative between four regional theatres. By employing a racially and geographically diverse collective of freelance artists to identify new work, scout projects, and facilitate relationships on behalf of all four theatres, the Artistic Caucus seeks to disrupt traditional curatorial practices.
Creating Trust Through Money: A Conversation on the Common Wallet Project
11 May 2023
Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli talk about the Common Wallet, an initiative in which everyone involved commits to living out of the same bank account. Together, the group aims to develop more radical forms of solidarity, kinship, and trust, as well as a thorough questioning of and experimenting with different possible relationships to money.
Meet the Participants of the 2023 Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio!
8 May 2023
The Latinx Theatre Commons announces the cohort of six directors, twenty-four designers, and seven scholars/documentarians selected for the Designer and Director Colaboratorio in Portland, Oregon this summer.
Latinx Theatre Commons producer Jacqueline Flores introduces the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront Series, which amplifies the history and work of Latinx teatros through conversations between established theatremakers with future leaders of the field.
After three years of digital only, transnational collaborations, performingborders is opening a space for movement, sharing, and conversation, to re-center our bodies in the explorations of borders, live art, community, and resistance. This event features live captioning and closed captioning for the video archive.
The New Role Theatre and Performance Can and Should Play in the New Age of the Anthropocene
Thursday 20 April 2023
New York City
Join us for a Whole Earth Conversation with Andreas Weber (Germany) about the new role theatre and performance can and should play in the new age of the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. We ask how the significant symbolic, imaginary, and real space of theatre can help artists and audiences realize that a contemporary theatre and performance practice can no longer just represents interhuman conflicts.
Communications manager Ramona Rose King chats with Abigail Vega on her last day as HowlRound’s creative producer to reflect on her work with HowlRound and the Latinx Theatre Commons, producing using commons-based practices, and advice she’d give to aspiring producers.
Miranda Wright, producer and executive director at Los Angeles Performance Practice, and Jeffrey Mosser discuss how Miranda has developed a presenting organization for sharing ambitious, collaboratively created work over the last ten years, as well as what she’s learned from some major arts funding research.
A Living History of Ensemble Theatre (or Bob Leonard’s Ensemble Encyclopedia)
12 April 2023
Bob Leonard chronicles his work from the People’s Bicentennial Commission and the Road Company through the founding of the Network of Ensemble Theaters and Alternate ROOTS. Together, Jeffrey Mosser and Bob connect the dots through the middle wave of ensemble-based theatre in the United States.
Maintaining Connections from the Hyperlocal to the International
5 April 2023
Carlos Uriona and Jennifer Johnson, co-artistic directors at Double Edge Theatre, connect with Jeffrey Mosser to discuss how working in rural Massachusetts for over thirty years has enabled them to share art on the world stage.
Making Then Is Now During a Pandemic with Our Chinese Canadian Feminist Elders
28 March 2023
Julia Hune-Brown and Keira Loughran discuss crafting Then Is Now, a concept album/video playlist they created through conversations with Chinese Canadian women who grew up in Toronto’s Chinatown during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
On Diane Rodriguez’s Legacy of Mentorship as Reciprocity
9 March 2023
As the inaugural recipient of the Diane Rodriguez Teatrista Award, Patricia Garza reflects on Rodriguez’s embodiment of collaborative leadership. They are joined by Manny Prieto and Nijeul X for a conversation about the potential unlocked by more expansive approaches to mentorship.
This week, Yura Sapi is join by Tierra Allen who shares about creating The Real Work, a podcast about theatre culture and transformative justice that is co-produced with We Rise Production. This episode’s topics include learning from non-humans, sharing poems and songs, and being the change.
The International Presenting Commons Convenes at Last
6 February 2023
The International Presenting Now convening brought a collective of US-based presenters of international work together in physical space in January 2023, following almost three years of virtual conversations and events. Janice Paran details the conversations that arose around the convening’s key question: how might international presenters want to work differently?
International Presenting Now: Collaborative Models, Practices, and Pathways Toward a Sustainable Future
Monday 9 January 2023
New York City, New York
This roundtable conversation explores pathways for sustaining and furthering global exchange and international touring in the United States. This event livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Monday 9 January 2023 from St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York. The archival video has American Sign Language interpretation and closed captions.
Art2Action and Animating Democracy presented Artistic Imagination as a Force for Change, the third event in the series Animating Democracy: REFLECTING FORWARD, livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Friday 18 November 2022 at 1 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 3 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Moving at the Speed of Trust: Two Theatres, One Playwright-in-Residence
24 October 2022
Star Finch sits down with artistic director of Crowded Fire Theater Mina Morita and co-founder of Campo Santo Sean San Jose to discuss their innovative idea to collaborate for the National Playwright Residency Program.
Polish Connections: A New Generation of Theatre Linkages Between the United States and Poland
19 September 2022
For the past two years, LINKAGES: Poland has convened theatre leaders from Poland and the United States to discuss fieldwide issues. When three theatremakers who have been deeply involved in the project traveled from the United States to Poland this summer, they were struck by the changing landscape of Polish theatre and its parallels to the US theatre industry.
International Theatre Forum Hosted by Shoshin Theatre Association in Cluj, Romania
Saturday 17 September 2022
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Shoshin Theatre Association in Cluj, Romania presented Out of the Frame International Theatre Forum livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Saturday 17 September at 7 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 11 a.m. UTC / 2 p.m. EEST (Cluj, UTC +3).
Ann James introduces the Rebuilding for the Future: A Convergence of Thought Leaders in Intimacy Practice series with this call for intimacy professionals to build a foundation of equity in the industry by interrogating available mentorship and training structures. This essay begins that work by highlighting the need for a diverse pool of training ideologies and methods; and the interview-based series that follows takes up that need by highlighting the perspectives of eight practitioners who navigate the intimacy industry in a variety of ways.
A Participatory Experiment in Hybrid Community Convening Offered Online and in Philadelphia
Monday 25 July 2022
Philadelphia, PA
Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET) presented BREAK/through, a participatory experiment in hybrid community convening offered in Philadelphia and livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Monday 25 July 2022 from 7:30 a.m.-12 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. EDT (Philadelphia, UTC -4).
A Conversation With Theatres Implementing Alternative Organizational Models
Tuesday 19 July 2022
United States
The Playwrights Realm presented the panel Different Leadership Models livestreaming on the commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 19 July 2022.
The Corpo Quebrada and Ecopoetics of the Commons / O Corpo Quebrada e as Ecopoéticas dos Comuns
22 April 2022
Gabriel Augusto Liparini Queiroz sits down with Adilson Siqueira, Aneliza Rodrigues Prado, and Patrick Veniali da Silva to discuss their work at the Laboratory of Ecopoetics (ECOLAB) at the Federal University of São João del-Rei. They share their research on the concept of the corpo quebrada—literally the “bent body”—which responds to ecological crisis by embodying resilience and flexibility.
IETM Focus Brussels 2022: "Beyond Fairness: Stories of Solidarity"
Brussels-based artist Anna Rispoli talks about the Common Wallet project.
Thursday 7 April 2022
Brussels, Belgium
IETM – International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts – presented a keynote "Beyond Fairness: Stories of Solidarity" by Brussels-based artist Anna Rispoli on the Common Wallet project. Livestreaming on the commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network Thursday 7 April 2022 at 9 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 2 p.m. BST (London, UTC +1) / 15:00 CEST (Brussels, UTC +2).
An Interview with Sharon Day and Chas Jewett facilitated by Priscilla Solis Ybarra
Tuesday 29 March 2022
United States
Cara Mía Theatre’s Mellon Playwright in Residence Virginia Grise presented Talleres for Dreaming: Episode 4 livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network on Tuesday 29 March 2022 at 4 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 6 p.m. CST (Chicago, UTC -6) / 7 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5).