Recent Essays

Facing Backlash: Performance in the Age of Reactionary Politics gathered Canadian artists and academics to contend with the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Mariló Núñez and Marlis Schweitzer distill the two-day symposium into ten actions theatremakers can take into their own work.  

After moving his family cross-country to be closer to other relatives, this month’s diarist is balancing especially full home and work calendars. His tight schedule has him taking meetings during his young daughter’s naptimes and fitting in marathon training after teaching undergraduates. 

To make theatre with forced migrants in Serbia, Dmitrii Zenkov knew he had to slow down. He reflects on the ethics of tempo in the slow-motion Phiz-Drama project and offers exercises for others to bring into their own work. 

Through creative captions, the access tool of captioning becomes a design element with its own dramaturgical perspective. Caption designer McClain Leong introduces some of the design considerations that enable a dramaturgical approach to creative captions. 

Chantal Bilodeau reflects on a decade of curating the Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series and the ways the work (and world) has shifted in that time. She invites you to contribute your own thoughts on theatre and the environment to the commons. 

Amanda L. Andrei crossed continents to see Carolina Bianchi and Cara de Cavalo’s Chapter II: The Brotherhood in search of transformation. She traces the play’s shape and the horror of recognition it prompted through its focus on abusive men in theatre and the traumas they leave in their wakes. 

The Writing the Future workshop intended to create space where young Palestinian theatremakers’ could articulate their own precarity through monologue and solo performance. But its focus on futurity, Bayan Shbib writes, gave way to a harsher, clearer, and more necessary insistence on presence. 

Dorcy Rugamba advocates for a theatre that enables us to embrace other histories and draw on the full breadth of human experience in order to adopt a universal perspective.

This month’s diarist has been navigating government healthcare for his mother and grandmother, which requires relentless advocacy and follow-through. In addition to caring for them and working at multiple theatres, he is producing a solo show about his struggles getting his mother the care she needs.