Recent Essays

Since 2020, the BIPOC Critics Lab has trained dozens of emerging critics in craft of criticism. In this reflection on the joy, labor, and creativity that goes into running the program, José Solis surfaces lessons from the lab’s path thus far.

How can voice work enable actors to access their widest range of expression? What happens when vocal training is not about “fixing,” but play and connection? Madeline Sayet sits down with voice practitioner Sayda Trujillo to explore these questions in a conversation about liberatory vocal practice.

What levels of change and accountability are we responsible for? Professor Elizabeth McQueen sits down with artist-activist Sara Porkalob to consider this question in light of both her recent work on Dragon Baby, which completes the Dragon Cycle, and her experiences with virality and accountability at multiple scales.

Playwright Tomi Endter imagines a future fifty years from now when American theatre has finally centered Native voices. She looks back at how the industry transformed from exclusion to the celebration of Native stories and artists.

Madeline Easley details an experience working with the Wyandots of Kansas while writing a new play for Kansas City Repertory Theatre that touched on deep, nuanced, multi-governmental politics—and how that experience contrasts with her other experiences in the American theatre.

Chingwe Padraig Sullivan shares findings and impacts of the recent Native Theatre Community Town Hall on representation, erasure, and accountability in the American theatre, which was hosted by HERE Arts Center.

Tara Moses introduces the series The Unspoken Treaty: The Pattern, Impact, and Disruption of Silencing Native Voices, outlines how the “American theatre” got here, details key takeaways from the series, and offers an invitation to institutional leaders to move from being unsettled to galvanized.

Murielle Borst-Tarrant asks herself why she’s still creating. Amid loss and chaos and life’s ongoing minor dramas, she returns over and over again to the work.

In its second and final year, the Artistic Caucus aimed to integrate its collaborative model into the workflows and budgets of four theatres while providing freelance artists with access and compensation. Lauren Halvorsen details the program’s strategies, impact, and significance for a field in need of transformation.