Recent Essays

Thomas Schmidt, author of Power and Structure in Theater, shares his research on the German theatre landscape. He illuminates toxic power structures, explains how the way theatre operates is a result of Germany’s neocolonial and Nazi history, and offers recommendations for how to improve in the future.

Food Tank’s Little Peasants bridged theatre and advocacy by staging an interactive play set during a union vote at a fictional international coffee chain. Elena Morris discusses the play’s development process and its place in the theatre-based food systems advocacy strategies employed by the nonprofit Food Tank.

Rob Silverman Ascher chronicles the collaboration between Aaron Pang, a non-fiction storyteller with no formal theatrical training, and Johanna Kasimow, a director with a background in devising and physical theatre, on Herein Lies the Truth: Pang’s story that centers around sex and disability and confronts able-bodied expectations of what a disabled performer ought to share.

In Keiko Green’s The Bed Trick, a new adaptation of All’s Well That Ends Well, issues of consent in both the bedroom and the theatre classroom are explored in the modern context of college. Erin Murray explains how the show creates a theatrically slippery and inquisitive space which prompts audience members to examine their own role in a society that fosters rape culture. 

Barbara Fuchs shares findings from “For a Resilient US Theater, Post-Pandemic,” a Pandemic Preparedness Performing Arts research project which looked at how the nonprofit theatre sector responded to the COVID pandemic. The report asked what worked, where, and why, in order to recommend new measures to pave long-term stability in theatre. 

Todd London celebrates the work and love story of multidisciplinary theatremakers Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet who have been creating theatre as part of the ensemble Talking Band for the past fifty years. 

Beto O’Byrne discusses the work of three theatre artists in New York whose acts of cultural resistance contribute to the movement for a free Palestine.

In this dispatch from the third day of the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) Tenth Anniversary Convening, Olga Sanchez Saltveit reflects on conversations about the LTC’s future, as well as the art, community, and celebration threaded through the convening’s closing ceremonies.

Georgina Leanse H. Escobar writes and draws a reflection on the second day of the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening, which brought Latinx theatremakers together through poetry, conversation, and hope founded in community.

Iraisa Ann Reilly recounts the introductions, histories, and memories shared throughout the first day of the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening.