Recent Essays

Hesam Sharifian reflects on how the blackface mask of the Hāji Firuz and Siāh-Bāzi clowns in Iran is reminiscent of an ugly past and should not be used in performance today.

Misheck Mzumara looks at the way the COVID-19 pandemic has affected theatre in Malawi and thinks through what comes next.

Luane Davis Haggerty shares successes, learnings, and innovations from the Deaf theatre community over the past year of pandemic performance.

Mary Kathryn Nagle predicts four main ways the American theatre will devise a future where theatrical storytelling does not directly contribute to white supremacy.

Zenkő Bogdán believes public cultural institutions should be redefined from the perspective of the people around it: it’s artists, employees, and audiences. As an exercise, she has begun to reimagine a future public theatre’s rules of organizing and functioning—and wants each and every reader of the document to participate.

JD Stokely and Nkenna Akunna speculate about what a Black queer future looks like, speaking to sleep and rest, spirit, cyclical time, and more.

Georgina HL Escobar believes the impossible can be written into existence and shares that the power of imagination is the first step towards active realization.

Aly Perry shares her experience of transformative public intimacy in 600 Highwaymen’s recent immersive show.

Chris Myers talks about the importance of class politics and makes a case for why artists ought to reckon with it, both as creative people and just plain workers.

Ezra Brain argues that political theatre has largely been reduced to simply calling out the problems in society, effectively preaching to the choir, and believes that in order to save political theatre, it must be re-Marxed.