Recent Essays

Stories connect us to our past and shape our futures, helping us to imagine alternatives, to envision the dreams towards which we can collectively mobilize. Here, storyteller meets storyer as Fidaa Ataya and Dovie Thomason come together to hear, share, and shape stories for this moment.

zuri arman applies a dark decypherment critique to Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, surfacing the abjection of Blackness that underpins its narrative of white queer belonging.

This diarist freelances out of state, but this week she is at home beginning her daughter’s transition from educational services to housing for disabled adults. Her week is full of paperwork, pureed pizza, and a commitment to remaining present.  

Nataki Garrett reflects on the May Day activation that kicked off the Doris Duke Foundation’s Creative Labor, Creative Conditions campaign. She shares how the day highlighted the essential labor of artists and poses the question: what do artists need in order to do that essential labor?

How do you expose a country’s most shameful moments on stage in a way that excites the audience, instead of alienating them? Handan Salta and Ionuţ Caras explore that while discussing 9 Shames and other scandalous scenes from Romania’s recent past, which Ionuţ directed for the Lucian Blaga National Theatre festival. 

In October 2025, eighteen artists gathered in Maine for a weekend of sharing artistic practice as part of the MicroCosmos project. JD Stokely reflects on the embodied learnings of the convening, what it meant to come together at a crossroads, and how this was only the beginning of what’s to come. 

Zora Howard’s Hang Time demands a deep contemplation of empathy. Ciaran Short discusses the way the play’s warping and flattening of time creates space to explore Black men’s capacity for gentleness, intimacy, and the mundane—even when forced into a suspended state. 

How can a director decenter themselves while still fulfilling the role of “director”? Kimberly Senior found an answer to this question in Facilitative Leadership, a practice of redistributing power that transformed her recent rehearsal process. 

The 2025 Divine Comedy festival theme was “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Representing the Center for International Theatre Development, John Vreeke attended and concluded that while barbarians were present in the disruptive plays, there were also beautiful moments of human connection and empathy.