Recent Essays

P. Carl interviews playwright Sarah Ruhl on her collection of short essays titled "100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater." 

I’ll always be fighting for my voice to be heard. That’s why we need more eyewitness accounts. People saying I was there. I saw everything. I know the truth. And that’ll be me. Telling the truth.

The "Playwrights, Rewrites, Multiple Productions Series" is a weekly series of interviews examining the process of developing a new play through a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere as a part of their Continued Life of New Plays Fund. Visualizations are from HowlRound's community-powered New Play Map.

The book as a whole is a deeply moving, authentic, and relatable piece of writing. It begins by relating "The Panza Monologues" authors’ personal and social history, and then shifts gears into practical application, even including a DIY (do it yourself) production manual. "The Panza Monologues" illustrate the inherent value of theater and performance of and from a specific community and culture.

On Sunday, August 24th at the Regional Arts Commission in St. Louis, St. Louis-based theater artists Jacqueline Thompson and Don McClendon participated in the #FergusonMoment gathering and workshop with forty-five local artists and five visiting artists. In the workshop, Don's story of a recent moment of racial profiling was the basis of a short play that the group created and investigated. On Tuesday, September 2nd, Jacqueline interviewed Don about his experience in the gathering.

Over my time in Spartanburg, I learned firsthand that South Carolina is not a homogenous place. There are all kinds of people in South Carolina, people with voices and powerful stories. A lot of those stories are invisible because of the cultural and political climate that surrounds them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there—but it means that to those living outside of the state, they don’t exist.

Jonathan Mandell covers the beginnings and career of playwright A.R. Gurney, as serveral of his plays are presented in New York's 2014-15 season. Mandell includes quotes from Gurney about Broadway, making old scripts work in new ways, and advice for young playwrights.

Miranda Wright doesn’t want to be pegged – not yet. The theatrical environment that she’s creating is both local and global—theater for a world that is simultaneously more connected and isolated, more expansive, more community-oriented, more lonely. More than anything, she’s concerned with the present moment.

P. Carl interviews Michael Garcés, Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater, about their touring production California: The Tempest, which revisits ten California communities that were part of ten year’s of Institute Summer Residencies.