Recent Essays

There is much that can be done in a truck that cannot be done in a conventional theater—and vice versa. The shows we create for a truck will forever only be performed in a truck, as they’d be much different shows if we wrote them with a brick and mortar theater in mind. Working in trucks is a great primer in how to exploit the particulars of a given environment, and a great reminder that we shouldn’t take theater spaces and the assumptions that come with them for granted. Conventions are great, but using them should be a choice.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC), in association with the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC), is proud to announce the 2014 LATC Encuentro: A National Latina/o Theatre Festival. This groundbreaking festival will be the largest national Latina/o theater festival in over twenty-five years, bringing together 100 artists from across the country to explore the aesthetic, thematic, and cultural diversity in the field.

Alice Stanley Jr. writes about Red Planet Respite by Katherine Harroff a play about "the first luxury space vacation to Mars in 2044" and the balance of its value as entertainment and as encouragement for audiences to engage with science and education

This week's conversation topic is "What's Your Relationship to Your Audience?" and will be moderated by Ian Hylands @8inky—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, June 19 on hashtag #newplay at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).

My maturation as a young theater practitioner has nothing to do with finding and knowing the answers. I don’t know them. Trust me. It has everything to do with facing the pivotal question: of which American theater do I want to be a part? The answer is that I will only, and can only, be a part of the theater that evolves through the specific and indispensable relationship with its community.

My hope is that for an issue as important as this one, we’ll all extend our collaborative impulses beyond the rehearsal room. (We’re not always so good at that.) Instead of working at cross purposes and duplicating each other’s efforts, let’s pool our resources and face facts together. We’ll be stronger for having worked side-by-side, don’t you think?

Robert Kaplowitz offers insight on theatre awards. 

Writers and directors such as Robert Wilson, María Irene Fornes, Richard Foreman, Caryl Churchill, Elizabeth LeCompte, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Peter Brook, Ed Bullins, and Joseph Chaikin challenged our notions of space and duration, meaning and eventfulness, theatricality and chance. They revolutionized our sense of what a play might be. That was their revolution. What is our avant-garde?

Last night there was an outpouring of disgust, sadness, confusion, anger, and frustration over a decision to again treat our field as though we are not as important as the rest of the team. This rush of emotion comes because this is not new to us at all. The amount of work in order to be validated by the Tony Awards as a category, which was instated in 2008, seems to have meant nothing at all if it suddenly goes away. It’s not about an award. It’s not about the spotlight—most of us work very hard to go unnoticed during a performance (unless we need to be noticed). It’s about validation for the work that we do and how hard it is to do this work.

The answer is not to sweep them under the rug, refuse to acknowledge their contributions, and hide from our own lack of understanding. And we especially cannot do this when our industry already fails in so many others ways to support the artists who make the magic happen.