Content in this section centers one crucial aspect of theatremaking: the audience. How do theatremakers identify and attract the right audience for a particular work? What are the different levels of engagement, from simple spectatorship to participation? Amrita Ramanan’s 2013 series gathers thoughts from leaders in the field and is a great place to start, as are videos from Theatre Communications Group’s 2015 Audience (R)Evolution Convening.
The Latest
Podcast
Just Comfortable Enough to Get Immersive
by Martin Boross, Tara Khozein, Diana Delgado, Hope Orange
6 January 2026
Essay
Toward a Dramaturgy of Healing and Care
by Lizzie Rajchel
20 October 2025
Essay
Building Trust When Staging Others’ Intimate Stories
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.
Georgia Evans is the writer and director of Walls: Chloe’s Story, a Forum Theatre play about people with chronic vulvovaginal pain—something she doesn’t deal with. She discusses how to create a show about other’s intimate stories in a collaborative, trustworthy way.
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.
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.
Food Tank’s Little Peasants bridged theatre and advocacy by staging an interactive play set during a union vote at a fictional international coffee chain. Elena Morris discusses the play’s development process and its place in the theatre-based food systems advocacy strategies employed by the nonprofit Food Tank.
After being asked to share his thoughts on the future of international touring, Why Not Theatre founder Ravi Jain offers some of what he’s learned about engaging “new” audiences and building lasting relationships between artists and presenters.
Hosts Leticia Ridley and Jordan Ealey interview Oscar winner and MacArthur genius Tarell Alvin McCraney about his work as a playwright, how Black people tell stories, and what it means to be an artistic leader.
Scott Walters, author of Building a Sustainable Theater: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of Your Artistic Career, sits down with Munroe Shearer to discuss the ways artist-owned theatres can succeed and best serve their communities.
Latinx theatremakers Jorge Piña and Christin Eve Cato sit down for a conversation about their paths through the theatre field and their advice for future generations looking to sustain this work while caring for themselves and each other.
When utilized fully, social media can function as a critical extension of work being done onstage. Trevor Boffone pulls from his experience as a content creator and social media manager to share concrete steps that theatremakers and theatre companies can use to leverage the unique potentials of social media.
Audiences are not “back” to pre-pandemic levels, and there may be a variety of compounding reasons why. ART/New York convened a panel of marketing specialists with an array of perspectives to talk about what’s working, what’s not, and what new strategies we might try in order to best reach and engage our audiences.
Spurred on by the National Theatre production of James Graham’s Dear England, verity healey discusses the notion that theatre in the United Kingdom might have a few things to learn from football.
David Howse and Ronee Penoi, co-leaders of ArtsEmerson, introduce the Black and Indigenous Futures Series with an essay that discusses their commitment to a shared leadership approach that foregrounds solidarity between Black and Indigenous communities.
Artistic director of Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed, Alexander Devriendt talks through their process for imagining and developing participatory content. Alexander and Jeffrey Mosser also dig into financing art in Europe, the cost of touring internationally and how COVID has affected it, and sustaining family and art simultaneously.
Creatives and book authors Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman dig into their new book based on their piece City Council Meeting, an exciting performance, rooted in a commonplace bureaucratic event, that develops dynamic participatory relationships with audiences and local government.
YDC Theatre has been producing theatre consistently in Malawi, even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They join Fumbani Innot Phiri, Jr. to trace the connections between the company’s consistent work centering Malawian perspectives, their efforts to build an audience, and the political and funding climate that they must navigate.
Jack Msumba, creative director of Youth Developers Collaboration Theatre, has big ideas for the future of Malawian theatre. In this interview, he shares his plans to eventually build Malawi’s first theatre house by producing work consistently in schools, communities, and commercial settings.
With Parmida Ziaei (Seda, Seattle) & Shadi Ghaheri (Peydah, NYC)
11 May 2022
In the greater conversation about MENA or SWANA identity, many national and ethnic groups do not neatly fit into that category or are in between geographic areas. One of the largest groups that are both within and without what is considered the “Middle East” is Iran. So many Iranian leaders are making intentional space for the diversity and specificity of their culture by creating companies for Iranian artists. In this episode, we highlight two Iranian theatre companies: Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble in Seattle, WA, and Peydah Theatre Company in NYC.
Rodrigó Balogh and Márton Illés discuss the process of creating outdoor theatre performances and share their experience producing them with Independent Theatre Hungary.
Margarita Kompelmakher details the Alliance Theatre’s process of adapting Working into a community-engaged production that both modeled grassroots organizing and told the story of the work of organizers in the city.
Tara Brooke Watkins reflects on the legacy of Robbie McCauley, who challenged the status quo of theatre systems, from the classroom to the rehearsal room to productions.
Fumbani Innot Phiri Jr. details the creative process of the production of The Vagina Monologues that took place during 16 Days of Activism in Malawi and offers his thoughts, as an audience member, on the show’s big impact.
