Recent Essays

#RightsWeek post: While I think the databases may be useful for schools and small companies, at the highest level I question whether access to plays is really the rate-limiter behind getting more plays to production. Rather I think the dialogue between producers and playwrights is limited and opaque and inauthentic, leading to misspent efforts all around.

Alice Stanley Jr. reviews Chris Danowski’s endofplay/7, a wild ride of gender exploration, narcissism, and longing

Sean Patrick Flahaven offers insight into how artists can protect their intellectual property from piracy. 

#RightsWeek post: No one gets into directing new plays because they want to copy someone else’s work. For me, the fun is in solving a monumental problem in a completely unique and aesthetically elegant manner.

Dani Snyder-Young writes about Generation Sex, a devised piece from Teatro Luna looking at misogyny, violence, Latina identities, modern femininity, and more.

Creativity and collaboration both rely on trust and on the work of other people. But the law seeks to make the murky concrete, and the complicated simple. This is why we should keep our understanding of piracy (and for that matter, plagiarism) to the very clear cases when scripts and designs are used without their creators’ permission.

As part of the "#RightsWeek: Protecting & Sharing Your Intellectual Property" series on HowlRound, this week's Twitter conversation topic is "Publishing Your Work in New Media" and will be moderated by Amy Rose Marsh @AmyRoseMarsh and Samuel French, Inc @MrSamuelFrench—who like all of our moderators, authors, and content producers—self-selected to peer-produce on this commons-based platform! This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, July 17 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (New York) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

The TYA branch of theater for, by and with young people offers a rare intersection of authorship, representation and inverted hierarchies. When the lack of youth voices in the creation of theater for youth is accepted as normal, a power structure thrives that creates theater by, with and pleasing to adults. What happens when youth write, perform and even produce their own work, causing the usual gatekeepers to take a backseat?

I believe that here, Lady Percy describes the effects of combat on the veteran. I also believe that she shows, first-hand, the effects of war on the veteran's family. I find it awful that a monologue describing a rift between a combat veteran and his wife, which was written more than 400 years ago, is a rift that still exists today—throughout most of our society. This rift is a large part of what, I believe, prevents the reintegration of veterans back into society. But what is the rift between veteran and civilian?