Recent Essays

Morgan Gould reviews The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, and also interacts with the idea of revealing her tastes as a critic before reviewing.

Daniel Talbott offers a reflective overview of Caffe Cino—one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway.

Within the bigger picture of "openframe", I define myself as an immersive storyteller. My text is that of playwrights, space, and senses. I am adamant about crafting the relationship between the audience and the story as specifically as the relationship between two characters. When it is built at its best, the audience’s presence is an imperative for the story to move forward.

Patricia Davis interviews DC-based director Stevie Zimmerman, discussing casting, directing styles, and the challenges of new work.

The Welders is a new DC-based playwrights’ collective whose mission is to establish an evolving, alternative platform for play development and production. Over the course of three years, the collective will produce one play by each of the group’s five member playwrights and then give the entire organization—website, checkbook, and audience—to a new generation of artists. In a periodic series of articles, members of The Welders are going to be reporting on the collective’s experience in an attempt to share knowledge with (and learn from) the broader theatrical community.

This week's conversation topic is "Is your company playwright-driven, director-driven, actor-driven? A conversation about aesthetics, authorship, and companies". This hour-long Howl will take place on Thursday, July 10 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

Translator Henning Bochert and playwright Carlos Murillo talk playwriting and directing US theatre.

In the modern military, weeks and weeks are spent tearing the "civilian" out of civilians-turned-recruits. Ripping out the thoughtful, compassionate, human response and replacing it with what I call the "labrador reflex."

These personal experiences of Belarus Free Theatre—what they have endured, and what they are willing to sacrifice for what they believe in—humbles me. I cannot imagine being arrested for doing theater, much less being physically threatened by my own government for a play I wrote or acted in or directed. Would I be able to be as brave as Khalezin and Koliada or the other members of their company?