Theatre Education, Pedagogy, and Training

Since 2020, the BIPOC Critics Lab has trained dozens of emerging critics in craft of criticism. In this reflection on the joy, labor, and creativity that goes into running the program, José Solis surfaces lessons from the lab’s path thus far.

Maridee Slater invites theatremakers to think beyond graduate school credentials and gatekeepers to preserve the embodied practices that allow us to see each other and collaborate across difference. Let’s circle up.

Since her arrival at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, Jayme Kilburn has grown its theatre program into a valued local cultural institution. By positioning theatre as a social service, she writes, she has cultivated a community that wants to show up.

From a four-mile-long human chain to a torchlight ceremony in the rain—the playful, passionate demonstrations and symbols that arose from Hungary's Freeszfe movement inspired artists globally. Todd London and László Upor discuss the movement’s many examples of how artists can use their talents to stand up to tyranny.

Through culturally responsive pedagogy, Bryan Stanton opened up their design classrooms to center student voices and value knowledge from many distinct cultures. They reflect on the practices they used to usher in this transformation and the profound impact it has had on students.

Theatrical movement classes often neglect access for people of all ability levels. Theatre educator Katie Butler shares about breaking ableist frameworks in her movement pedagogy and a new framework she is developing to do so: assessing principles rather than skills.

Anna Deavere Smith is not only a prolific playwright known widely for her verbatim theatre plays, but she is also a teacher with a distinct pedagogy. She speaks with her former student Alex Ates, who also teaches theatre, about her current approaches to teaching and how they have developed over the years.

Shebana Coelho reconnects with G. Venu, Sanskrit theatre practitioner and teacher of the Navarasa Sadhana workshop that changed her life. The two talk about this ancient theatrical practice, how it has manifested in both of their lives, and Venu’s journey to teaching this practice.

Theatre educators Tara Brooke Watkins and Allison Tucker talk about their experiences creating a space for children to freely explore gender identity via costuming.

Access for disabled theatre artists within the theatre industry is lacking, and pathways for those in production disciplines to enter the industry are particularly neglected. Alexis Wilner highlights the inaccessibility of common pathways and offers ideas to increase access. 

After experiencing how collectively reckoning with traumatic queer theatre history can also be joyful in his classroom, professor John Michael DiResta led a series of readings of queer period plays from the last half-century. He reflects on the way this process led to community building and healing beyond his expectations.

Teaching commedia dell’arte to theatre students can be a powerful way for them to gain useful skills. But it can also cause great harm. In this essay, Tara Cariaso explains the potential harms inherent to the form, and the need to reimagine commedia to create stories centered on joy, justice, and liberation.

A decade ago, translators dreamt of a formalized network for the promotion of theatrical translation in the United States. Neil Blackadder and Adam Versényi write about the ways this effort now feeds into a variety of development and production strategies for works in translation.

Theatre departments now face steady, targeted closures and downsizing nationwide. Jacqueline E. Lawton and Rachel Pollock speak to professors impacted by these cuts and lay out actions to preserve theatre education at the university level. 

Through a Wallace Foundation grant, scholars from the Latinx Theatre Commons co-authored a concept paper comprised of histories, strategies, and suggestions for archiving Latine theatre in all its forms and technologies. Carla Della Gatta introduces the paper with an executive summary and highlights from the report.