Recent Essays

Empathy can be a very powerful tool for our collective liberation, and it is something actors are often more skilled in than others. Yura Sapi discusses how actors can harness the power of empathy to have a significant impact on our world.

Carl(os) Roa and Rula(s) A. Muñoz share a multi-vocal, non-linear account of their group’s work at the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) Designer and Director Colaboratorio. Through both text and images, they document their group’s explorations of non-hierarchical generative process, as well as the challenges they faced.

Theatre professor John Michael DiResta reflects on teaching queer theatre history to students who have had very different lived queer experiences than he had growing up. By investigating queer theatrical history from a contemporary lens and with an invitation to engage and make something new, his students were able to find the joy in history where they previously only saw trauma.

Theatre educator Sofia Lindgren Galloway explores the complicated question of whether one should use content warnings when teaching theatre, and offers an approach for others to consider.

Spurred on by the National Theatre production of James Graham’s Dear England, verity healey discusses the notion that theatre in the United Kingdom might have a few things to learn from football.

After being asked to weigh in on the “crisis and chrysalis” that currently exists within the theatre field by Theatre Communications Group, Todd London shares his plea for us all as we dismantle and rebuild this field together.

Dolissa Medina details her group’s expansive design process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio. Engaging with a variety of spaces and art forms opened the group’s creative floodgates, allowing them to reach new perspectives on their work and their ways of relating to one another.

Kristin Idaszak reflects on experiencing Nina Vogel’s lambe-lambe piece ConCordis at the Prague Quadrennial. This deceptively simple puppet performance aided Kristin in processing her feelings about her work in theatre while navigating chronic illness, and also reminded her of the deep connection to the universe that we all share.

Giulianna Marchese discusses productions from the Ubumuntu Art Festival, which is held annually at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. Throughout this year’s festival, performances explored what it means to be a human post-tragedy—the highs and the lows.

Macy E. Kunke shares the practical steps she took to cultivate more sustainable stage management practices for a recent production of Men on Boats. By utilizing a variety of digital tools instead of more traditional printed paper methods, the stage management team created only a fraction of typical paper waste and found that their work that was cheaper, simpler, and more collaborative than typical stage management processes.