Aesthetics

Brad Rhines reviews Cosmin Chivu’s revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Mutilated at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

Rob Onorato considers the differences between shock and surprise on stage, and the effects of violence and traumatic theatre in columbinus and Gloria.

In this fourth installment, Director Damon Krometis discusses the implications of spatial relationships between performers and audiences.

Scenic designer Joe Klug considers how the proscenium stage impedes engagement and connection with an audience.

Dr. Jorge Huerta reflects on the birth, present, and enduring legacy of El Teatro Campesino on its fiftieth anniversary.

David Bruin on Teatro Patologico’s production of Medea at La Mama in New York City. 

Brett Aresco on Eliza Bent’s ode to poop, Toilet Fire, in New York City.

Jeff Chang on Detroit-based Complex Movements’ Beware of the Dandelions, a narrative, concert, visual installation, architectural piece, and convening space to distribute revolutionary ideas and activate creative ecosystems and economies of change. 

Andrew Bailes encourages theatre artists to embrace sincerity in their work, rather than cynicism or irony.

Michael Bigelow Dixon introduces the Monsters on Stage Project from Translyvania University.

Part interview, part photo essay, part play excerpts, Rebecca Stevens goes in-depth with playwright Marcus Gardley on his two recent productions at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, Illinois. 

On Albert Camus’s birthday, scholar Amy Brady reviews an article that was published in Theatre Arts Magazine in 1960 reflecting Camus’s reasons why he worked in theatre.

In this final installment, Jake Rosenberg traces the theatrical origins of the Spaghetti Western genre.

Eva Kyselová writes about trends in independent theatre in the Czech Republic.

Agnes Borinsky considers a framework for thinking about playwriting from the sentence up, rather than from the idea down, which offers an alternative to the infiltration of playwriting with market-based thinking.

Brett Aresco on Radical Evolution’s production of The Golden Drum Year by Beto O’Byrne.

Bob Fosse is the only theatre artist who has won eight Tony Awards for choreography and one for direction, an Academy Award, and an Emmy. Dan Friedman considers Fosse’s impressive although spare film legacy.

The Committee of the Jubilee makes a call to action to support a vision of every theatre in the United States of America producing work by women, people of color, artists of varied physical and cognitive abilities, and/or LGBTQIA artists in the 2020–2021 season.

Marcina Zaccaria on the 72nd Annual Venice Film Festival and the intersection of theatre and film acting.

Em Piro writes about the exciting wave of cross-genre collaboration she’s witnessing in St. Louis, and addresses the successes and pitfalls of such work.

In this installment of her After-the-Avant-Garde series, Kate Kremer looks at the parallel functions of the prompter in the chicken suit in Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s 2009 Romeo and Juliet and Br’er Rabbit in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon.

Raphael Martin on the history, organizational model, current reality, and aspirations of The Theatre Centre in Toronto, Canada.  

Director Desdemona Chiang provides an overview of Asian American discrimination and cultural appropriation in the US and argues that there is no way to divorce The Mikado from this problematic history.