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Recent Essays

This is a repository of written content, sorted by most recent to oldest. Enjoy!

An image of a bird and the words North Star.
Essay
23 October 2025

Maridee Slater invites theatremakers to think beyond graduate school credentials and gatekeepers to preserve the embodied practices that allow us to see each other and collaborate across difference. Let’s circle up.

A black and white photo of one person holding the train of another's clothes.
Essay
20 October 2025

The creators of After, There Will Be Flowers want to shift the narratives of intimate partner violence from perpetration to healing. Lizzie Rajchel, the project’s co-creator, describes some of the dramaturgical and practical moves the production made to center healing and care.

Two women on stage standing up and looking at each other over a table.
Essay
16 October 2025

Pub theatres bring theatre to communities in the United Kingdom through the combined business model of a performance venue and pub. Sophie Pell, who both makes and watches pub theatre, details the considerable benefits of this performance model.

a room full of chairs and music stands
Essay
6 October 2025

This is a call for diversity, equity, and inclusion in pit orchestra hiring. Joe LaRocca surfaces inequities embedded in the current contractor system of pit musician hiring, as well as some steps companies can take to remedy these issues.

Three actors at a kitchen table in a dining room set on stage.
Essay
1 October 2025

The Commonweal Theatre Company acts as a model for thriving theatre in a rural setting. Robert Hubbard details the ways the company’s resident ensemble operates, highlighting their artist/administrator doubling, artistic excellence, and embeddedness in the surrounding community.

A person on a ladder and another person looking up at them.
Essay
29 September 2025

Since her arrival at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, Jayme Kilburn has grown its theatre program into a valued local cultural institution. By positioning theatre as a social service, she writes, she has cultivated a community that wants to show up.

Four people in tropical clothes smiling.
Essay
25 September 2025

In Ryan “Oki” Naka’s hands The Golden Girls are reinvented as “The Golden Gays”: four queer Hawaiians navigating middle age in Waikiki Beach. Through love, friendship, and resistance, Nguyễn Minh Tiến writes, the characters in Ryan Okinaka's The Golden Gays overcome their challenges together.

Two people in clown costumes looking at each other.
Essay
23 September 2025

Xhloe and Natasha made Edinburgh Festival Fringe history with three consecutive award-winning shows, but even the most successful Fringe acts struggle to break even. Jonathan Mandell sits down with the clown duo to discuss the energy, strategy, and effort required to take the world’s largest arts festival by storm.

A row of actors standing on stage with a photo of Hitler behind them on the screen.
Essay
22 September 2025

Lass uns die Welt vergessen: Volksoper 1938 stages Austria’s fascist past, reckoning with the ghosts of Nazism and their legacies. For Jordan Schildcrout, the docudrama-metamusical becomes an opportunity to interrogate Austria’s history—and to imagine the future of the United States.

A group of people outside at a festival with large puppets.
Essay
17 September 2025

Ada Mukhina sits down with global artists and theatremakers—Kiyo Gutiérrez from Mexico, Teddy Mangawa from Zimbabwe, Dijana Milošević from Serbia, and Trà Nguyễn from Vietnam—to discuss their strategies for incorporating both care and risk in performance. 

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