Recent Essays

In my mind, we were a small ensemble company in a small city with no artistic reputation and, at that point, still no ensemble. I was hoping for fifty submissions, and that was if we were extremely lucky…

Boston is a sports city. It also is an arts city. Allison Vanouse takes a look at the similarities including how both mediums and how they share time and space principles.

Danielle Rosvally begins her three-part series Love or Money, examining how to best navigate doing work in an industry in which we often make artists choose: love, or money?

Josh Sobel investigates the relationship between critics and Chicago's theatre community.

Is ensemble a group of people working together over a long duration? Is it a non-hierarchical organizational structure? A way of being and working together with a shared sense of priorities?

Daniel Sack continues his reflection on the 2013 Avignon Festival with a look at South African director Brett Bailey's installation-performance on colonial injusticies.

I think about paradoxical needs this experience embodies—for community and solitude; structures and flexibility; stability and change—and the need for all of it, simultaneously, in our lives, our practices, our field.

This Thursday's topic Trans Casting will moderated by MJ Kaufman who wrote the recent HowlRound Journal article: Don’t Call me Ma’am: On the Politics of Trans Casting.

In the following Around the Teapot series, three writers reflect on “Adventuring Together: Ensembles, Collectives, Laboratories & Networks,” a weekend-long gathering of performance artists and scholars, from across the U.S. and Europe, held in Los Angeles. 

MJ Kaufman offers compelling insight on the politcs of trans casting.