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.
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.
Shebana Coelho reconnects with G. Venu, Sanskrit theatre practitioner and teacher of the Navarasa Sadhana workshop that changed her life. The two talk about this ancient theatrical practice, how it has manifested in both of their lives, and Venu’s journey to teaching this practice.
Plant Man is a performative forest: a full-body suit filled with living plants, created and inhabited by Marco Guagnelli. He writes about the ways this performance-based artistic research project explores embodied relationships with nature through plant-filled garments and performative actions.
Learn About the Artistry, Camaraderie, and Joy That Can Be Unlocked When Actor Training Takes Place in an Affinity Space
Monday 7 April 2025
New York City
This evening gives artists, teachers, and audience members a chance to learn more about the role of affinity space actor training, what it can achieve, and why it is critical against the backdrop of widespread efforts to end—even punish—initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Ghost Forest grapples with the climate crisis playing out through sea level rise that impacts forests of the Eastern Bay in Maryland. Taylor Leigh Lamb discusses the way the play’s ecological approach extended into new play development process that supported the art, the artists, and the surrounding community.
The premise of the immensely popular solo show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha is simple: Julia Masli will seriously solve the audience’s problems through comedy. Melissa Lin Sturges discusses the production’s roots in Masli’s clowning background and the collectivist, interventionist energy the production engenders in its audience.
Palestinian performance artist Riham Isaac discusses her site-specific performances, which understand performance as a medium for change. She shares insights into her pieces like Stone on Road and the profound symbolism of resistance in Palestinian art.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson interview Palestinian African trans drag artist Mama Ganuush. They discuss the vibrant drag scene in San Francisco, Mama Ganuush's journey into drag, and the intersection of activism, identity, and performance.
In celebration of contemporary spoken-word performance by women and nonbinary artists, join us for an evening of short performances by established and emerging poets. The performances will be followed by a thoughtful discussion about the form's history and contemporary practice. A reception to follow.
This episode dives into the performance art of Lebanese artist Rima Najdi. From Hollywood's portrayal of Arab women to navigating complex personal and political landscapes, this thought-provoking discussion highlights the power of performance art in creating social change.
Abbie Anderson provides a list of eight actions that theatres can take to make their work environments more accessible and equitable for physically disabled actors.
The Culminating Money Jam of the 2024 Hip Hop FinFest Rap Song Competition and Contest
Wednesday 5 June 2024
New York City
Featuring winning student performances, guest artists, money stories with MC Dyalekt, and community conversations about one of the most crucial topics in our lives: money.
Todd London celebrates the work and love story of multidisciplinary theatremakers Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimet who have been creating theatre as part of the ensemble Talking Band for the past fifty years.
Beto O’Byrne discusses the work of three theatre artists in New York whose acts of cultural resistance contribute to the movement for a free Palestine.
Theatre is a collaborative art. In this week’s episode, host Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder talks with Padraic Lillis, artistic director of the Farm Theatre and Jennifer Goff, professor at Centre College, about the collaborative process. Drawing from their experience developing a new play through the Farm Theatre project, Padraic and Jennifer discuss the ways in which collaboration helps students learn to think critically, communicate effectively, take risks, and analyze text.
More and more theatre departments are incorporating devising into their training. This highly collaborative process allows students to generate their own work, giving them ownership of the final product. Theatre professors Andy Paris (North Carolina School of the Arts) and Emily K. Harrison (Hamilton College) discuss their process, how they engage students, and the benefits of allowing students agency in the creation of their own work.
Sara Nicole explores the advice for performers within the theatre industry of saying “yes” to everything, how it infringes on the autonomy of theatremakers, and why and how one must learn to say no.
Empathy can be a very powerful tool for our collective liberation, and it is something actors are often more skilled in than others. Yura Sapi discusses how actors can harness the power of empathy to have a significant impact on our world.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay convenes a roundtable discussion among actors, directors, producers, and playwrights from the Laotian diaspora who work in theatre in the United States. As former refugees and/or the refugees, these theatremakers navigate their places as arrivers in the settler-colonial structure of the United States.
A Constellation of Artist Talks, Ceremonies, a Digital Performance Showcase, and Varied Conjures/Facilitations on Black Virtuosic Hope-Building
Thursday 27 July - Sunday 30 July 2023
Philadelphia, PA
Highlighting sacred local cultural institutions including the Colored Girls Museum, the Discovery Center, and a ritual tour across the city of Philadelphia, this gathering is a space for a stirring up of a new hope, inspired entirely by the study of our ancestral and living leaders who have built for themselves and their communities a daily practice of Black virtuosic hope.
J.C. Pankratz returns to the podcast to reflect on the first full production of their play Seahorse, directed by Nicolas Shannon Savard, starring Emmett Podgorski. Nicolas, J.C., and Emmett discuss how the collaborative process, from auditions through closing night, was informed by queer community building, access intimacy, and consent-based practice. They offer behind-the-scenes perspectives and concrete examples of how tools and ideas discussed in previous episodes played out in practice.
The 2022 national tour of Oklahoma! brought Daniel Fish’s critically acclaimed revival to commercial theatre audiences nationwide. Those audiences met the production with overwhelming disapproval and animosity rooted in its departures from decades-old conventions. Actor Christopher Bannow, who played Jud in the touring production, details his experience of enduring audience rejection while remaining committed to engaging audiences in challenging conversations through risky theatrical choices.
