Recent Essays

Theatremaker and political educator Chris Myers writes a companion piece to Ife Olujobi’s “$5000.” He explains the structural reasons behind Ife’s struggle to gain more money for playwrights, why this struggle belongs to us all, and the organizing it will take to change it. 

Joseph Dunne-Howrie reflects on DV8’s Can We Talk About This?, exploring how the show employs pinkwashing as a vehicle for Islamophobia and racism. Joseph highlights how, rather than espousing progressive values, the show uses similar tactics of alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos.

Playwright Star Finch sits down with AeJay Mitchell to discuss their time working as a creative culture consultant on Star’s play, Josephine’s Feast. Together they explore how AeJay’s role functioned as a “river in the room,” a fluid space held for the artists to address their human needs beyond the limitations of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) framework.

Latinx theatremakers Jorge Piña and Christin Eve Cato sit down for a conversation about their paths through the theatre field and their advice for future generations looking to sustain this work while caring for themselves and each other.

Sophie McIntosh recounts her experience seeing Double Feature’s productions of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in one Brooklyn brownstone. The directors of the two shows prioritized care and collectivity and aimed to throw away power structures, despite their limited resources. As a person who has historically felt alienated by Shakespeare, Double Feature helped Sophie discover that Shakespeare was allowed to be for her too. 

Jan Cohen-Cruz delves into the process of bringing The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, a multi-city project that aims to use art to influence how people think about housing, to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Through this process, Jan saw how theatre can bring together housing advocates from different walks of life to find their commonalities and collectively imagine a world with equitable housing for all.

Sara Bozin explores the advice for performers within the theatre industry of saying “yes” to everything, how it infringes on the autonomy of theatremakers, and why and how one must learn to say no.

Dan Kpodoh’s The Struggle dramatizes governmental and corporate exploitation in the oil-rich Niger Delta by telling the story of a group of militants who sought liberation but became corrupted by financial interests. Eseovwe Emakunu, a Nigerian theatre professional, interviews Kpodoh about the play’s function as protest theatre against political oppression.

Alberto Justiniano and Milta Ortiz, artistic leaders at Teatro del Pueblo and Borderlands Theater, respectively, have to balance organizational leadership and prioritizing their art. They discuss this work and the ways they engage their Latine communities while providing them with avenues to reflect on social justice issues. 

In this installment of the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront series, artistic directors Mark Valdez and R. Réal Vargas Alanis discuss their work, diving into the impact of Latinx theatre and the Latinx renaissance in our midst.