HowlRound defines commons-based approaches as practices that promote relationality, cooperation, horizontal and decentralized decision-making and networks, bottom-up activity, and peer-to-peer sharing of infrastructure, material goods, knowledge, and ideas. Content in this section directly addresses practices of commoning from around the field. Dive in with essays on the promise of the commons, the birth of a climate commons, and how a commons becomes a selection committee.
Ayesha Jordan writes about the intersection of performance and permaculture, and how slowing down and respecting the cycles of the earth are influencing her multi-species project in process.
Kaneza Schaal shares the community practices she witnessed at her aunt’s home in Rwanda, and how theatremakers should embrace these practices when we create work together.
Blessings and Provocations from the 2024 Under the Radar Symposium
8 April 2024
Ashley Malafronte reflects on the 2024 Under the Radar Symposium, which convened global theatre artists, producers, and presenters in New York City for a day of keynotes and discussions that surfaced the issues plaguing the international performing arts sector, as well as the emergent paths that could strengthen it.
We Can’t Build an Equitable Theatre While Ignoring COVID
21 March 2024
Taylor Leigh Lamb argues that building the equitable theatre industry requires robust COVID precautions with steps like masking, air filtration, and advocacy within our theatrical spaces.
How LUNG Is Breathing Radical Joy into Theatre in the United Kingdom
5 March 2024
verity healey speaks to Matt Woodhead and Helen Monks, co-directors of LUNG, about LUNG’s work making campaign theatre that uses verbatim theatre strategies and associated political work to explore issues impacting the United Kingdom.
What Makes St. Louis a Flourishing Ecosystem for New Plays and Cooperative Production Models
13 February 2024
Jacob Juntunen traces the collaborative network of theatres and theatremakers in St. Louis that share resources and make the city a rich environment for new play development.
Playwright Star Finch sits down with AeJay Mitchell to discuss their time working as a creative culture consultant on Star’s play, Josephine’s Feast. Together they explore how AeJay’s role functioned as a “river in the room,” a fluid space held for the artists to address their human needs beyond the limitations of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) framework.
Sophie McIntosh recounts her experience seeing Double Feature’s productions of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in one Brooklyn brownstone. The directors of the two shows prioritized care and collectivity and aimed to throw away power structures, despite their limited resources. As a person who has historically felt alienated by Shakespeare, Double Feature helped Sophie discover that Shakespeare was allowed to be for her too.
Jan Cohen-Cruz delves into the process of bringing The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, a multi-city project that aims to use art to influence how people think about housing, to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Through this process, Jan saw how theatre can bring together housing advocates from different walks of life to find their commonalities and collectively imagine a world with equitable housing for all.
Alberto Justiniano and Milta Ortiz, artistic leaders at Teatro del Pueblo and Borderlands Theater, respectively, have to balance organizational leadership and prioritizing their art. They discuss this work and the ways they engage their Latine communities while providing them with avenues to reflect on social justice issues.
New Orleans’s Intramural Theater Centers Consent in Their Devising Model
19 December 2023
Amelia Parenteau details the devising process of Intramural Theater, sharing how the company creates a safe and supportive container for artists to tap into their wildest expressions and devise theatre that is wacky, surreal, and layered.
Affinity Spaces for MENA/SWANA and LGBTQIA+ Artists
13 December 2023
Affinity spaces have been an undercurrent of discussion across the three seasons of Kunafa and Shay. In this live session at the 2023 MENATMA Convening at Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, in partnership with Mizna+RAWIfest, Marina and Nabra sit down with artists to discuss the nuances of MENA and SWANA affinity spaces and MENATMA, Mizna, and RAWI’s roles in facilitating national cultural affinity among artists of intersectional identities.
Theater Mu managing director Anh Thu T. Pham and development director Wesley Mouri discuss the ideology behind the theater’s Pay As You Are program, how it works, and what impact it’s having on the theatre six years after its implementation.
Fourth Annual Convening of the Middle Eastern North African Theater Makers Alliance (MENATMA)
Conversations About the Present and Future of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Theatre
Saturday 28 October and Sunday 29 October 2023
San Francisco, CA
Does a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) leader necessarily mean it's easier for MENA work to get produced? How do MENA theatremakers and educators from K-12 to university settings navigate questions of cultural competency, representation, and omission? How can we work together with other networks of color towards shared goals for our communities? MENATMA presented a weekend of intercommunity dialogues, panels, and keynotes to explore the state of MENA theater and artist sustainability moving forward.
Carl(os) Roa and Rula(s) A. Muñoz share a multi-vocal, non-linear account of their group’s work at the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) Designer and Director Colaboratorio. Through both text and images, they document their group’s explorations of non-hierarchical generative process, as well as the challenges they faced.
Mateo Hernandez acknowledges collaboration and artmaking as two distinct processes that inform each other in the theatrical process, an observation rooted in their group’s experience of intentionally reexamining the collaborative process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Director and Designer Colaboratorio.
Play as Process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio
26 September 2023
The Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio gathered dozens of Latinx theatremakers to approach collaboration from a place of inquiry, play, and exploration. Carla Della Gatta writes about this event as an alternate story of what is happening—and what could be happening—in US theatre right now.
Designer and Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) steering committee member Tara Houston reflects on the transformation that the LTC inspired in her own career, and how the interventions at LTC convenings are helping Latinx theatremakers transform the theatre field.
Kinship, Solidarity, and Working Towards Everyone’s Survival
14 September 2023
As part of the Black and Indigenous Futures series, this conversation convenes Samora Pinderhughes, Storme Webber, and Mary Amanda McNeil to consider the ways that kinship and solidarity across broader collectives can coexist and mutually enrich one another through intentional practice.
The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy
With Guest H. May
13 September 2023
Dr. H. May joins host Nicolas Shannon Savard, who introduces the Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree Project, an interactive, open-access digital exhibit visually connecting trans artists across the United States to the collectives and communities who have sustained our work. This episode explores the role of mentorship in both the research for the project and in their own work as gender nonconforming theatremakers.
As part of the Black and Indigenous Futures series, Amber Starks and Kyle Mays discuss the siloing of Afro-Indigenous identity, the opportunities and challenges of developing Black and Indigenous solidarity, and the potential to build a future more deeply rooted in kinship.
Decolonizing Arts Leadership Through Shared Black and Indigenous Leadership
12 September 2023
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.
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.
Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description
With Guests H. May and Liz Thomson
26 July 2023
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard, Dr. H. May, and Dr. Liz Thomson discuss the creative and collaborative possibilities that emerge when audio description (AD) is made an integral part of the artistic process, as opposed to solely an accommodation for individual audience members. They critique traditional models of AD that demand objectivity and propose alternative approaches that embrace self-determination, specificity of lived experience, and universal design.