As I sat down to write this post, I was struck by the fullness of 2018. Though I am a co-founder of HowlRound, I took on the new role of director in July 2018 and got married a few months later. Suffice to say, it has been a year of love, change, growth, and learning. Our work at HowlRound manifests in many different ways, and on this final day of the year I’d like to offer a snapshot of what 2018 meant for us and what we’re looking forward to in 2019.
We kicked off 2018 by re-articulating what we stand for through refining our mission, vision, and values and making sure our guidelines to contribute content reinforce those values. We scaled back our written content, now publishing five essays per week, to focus on quality over quantity, and added a new weekly email roundup to give you all an easy way to stay in the know.
Our work at HowlRound manifests in many different ways, and on this final day of the year I’d like to offer a snapshot of what 2018 meant for us and what we’re looking forward to in 2019.
We continued development on the World Theatre Map, a user-generated directory and real-time map of the global theatre community. We went to Chile where we launched the site in Spanish, and later added French, too. This project is an ongoing experiment in how we can connect the global theatre community through shared online infrastructure.
In March, in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we hosted a convening of the National Playwright Residency Program cohort and published our first programmatic assessment. Over the course of the year, we produced play development residencies for playwrights Luis Alfaro, Marcus Gardley, Kirsten Greenidge, Taylor Mac, Peter Nachtrieb, Kira Obolensky, Herbert Siguenza, and Carlos Murillo, which we hosted at our home base Emerson College. It was a gift to spend time with these artists. Throughout the year we documented the activities and impact of this radical program, which provides playwrights with space, time, and resources as salaried staff members at theatres for three-year terms.
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