Recent Essays

This week's conversation topic is "Critical Generosity and the Spectre of Niceness". Join us on Twitter hashtag #newplay on Thursday, January 16 at 11am PST – 12pm PST (Vancouver) / 1pm CST – 2pm CST (Austin) / 2pm EST – 3pm EST (New York) / 19:00 GMT – 20:00 GMT (London) / 8pm CET - 9pm CET (Berlin).

In this installation of PROPAGANDA: A Festival Celebrating Russian Voices, Lauren Keating addresses the Russian government passing the Anti-Propaganda Bill and the responses it has garnered.

We need to spend a little time talking about the Julia Child of Polish theater—Jerzy Grotowski—before we can get on to the contemporary companies which have emerged from this figure's work, and their rehearsal practices. So—who was Jerzy Grotowski? If you've ever seen the film "My Dinner with Andre", you've heard of the experiments of this compelling, controversial, sham-or-shaman theater director.

Lily Janiak reviews the Repurposed Theatre production of Rachel Luann Strayer’s Drowning Ophelia.

Amanda Boyle investigates the impacts and learning environments for LGBT students who have performed in gay plays in the past few years focusing specifically on productions of The Laramie Project, 8, and Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens at the University of Kansas.

Holly L. Derr reports from The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers's panel on diversity, and examines why diversity is such a huge talking point but still so lacking in action

In the middle of the National Theater Festival and National Independent Theater Festival in Bucharest, the divide between idependent theatre and state theatre—artistic freedom and money—becomes clear.

This week's conversation topic is "Stage to Screen/Screen to Stage: Lost in Translation?" which will be about the transition of a work from stage to screen and vice-versa, and the changes in theater’s place in the culture. Join us on Twitter hashtag #newplay on Thursday, January 9 at 11am PST – 12pm PST (Vancouver) / 1pm CST – 2pm CST (Austin) / 2pm EST – 3pm EST (New York) / 19:00 GMT – 20:00 GMT (London) / 8pm CET - 9pm CET (Berlin).