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.
The Latest
Essay
Facilitative Directing Centers the Art
by Kimberly Senior
1 June 2026
Essay
Artists Lead the Way at the 2026 Under the Radar Symposium
In this session, we look at how to make long-term plans to fully shift your internet life away from services that track, harvest, and control your information.
In September 2024, HowlRound and Company One convened leaders from the theatres in the Mellon Foundation’s Future of American Theatre Cohort. Dramaturg and Company One new work manager afrikah selah reflects on the experience and shares some of the group’s discoveries.
The Center for International Theatre Development’s LINKAGES programs foster long-term personal connections among artists. LINKAGES: Ukraine program director, John Freedman, details the program’s work connecting artists form different traditions, countries, and methodologies through conversations and theatrical exchange.
In January, hundreds of global arts leaders convened to strategize for a stronger performing arts field. Ashley Malafronte reports on this event, the 2025 Under the Radar Symposium, where participants spoke of funding challenges, politically-fueled decay, and—a bright spot—the centrality and partnership and legacy.
In this conversation from the 2024 American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference, multihyphenate artists Annalisa Dias and Madeline Sayet came together for a conversation on the conference’s themes of ecology, decomposition, and creation.
Key Takeaways on Health and Wealth in the Arts and a Panel on Navigating Change
Wednesday 2 April and Friday 4 April 2025
New York City
At this year’s Spring Summit, the A.R.T./New York team shared early findings from the data project, Health and Wealth: Supporting NYC Theatremakers through Data and Insights.
In 2023, StageSource shut down, which was a great loss to the Boston theatre community. Kitty Drexel highlights the various resources that have popped up in its wake to fill the gap.
The Opening of the WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival 2025
Friday 28 March 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana
The OverFlow is an evening of networking, entertainment, and special guests to mark the We Will Dream Festival’s grand opening. This panel features Patrick Duggan and Stuart Andrews, guided by Lauren Turner Hines.
Designed to Activate the Next Wave of Critical, Creative, and Collaborative Explorations of the Fornésian Tradition
Saturday 22 March 2025
Princeton, New Jersey
The 2025 Symposium offered a series of plenary readings from Fornés in Context in tandem with a constellation of hosted breakout conversations engaging questions of context, legacy, and engagement around Fornés’s work.
Using Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, Dr. Una Chaudhuri articulates protocols for endurance—through performance, connection, and action—as we face the rising tide of climate emergency.
Using Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company as a case study, Michael DeWhatley discussed leadership transition as an opportunity for boards to become more involved and connected to theatre organizations. Through collaborative and relational governance strategies, these organizations can evolve and sustain themselves.
How do you write a union play that doesn’t end in everyone yelling “Strike!”? Abby Schoering explores one answer to this question offered by Gwen Kingston’s Café Utopia, which engaged Notch Theatre’s community-responsive methods, verbatim interludes, and enough juicery puns to keep the laughs coming.
In their individual and collective artistic practices, Annalisa Dias and Applied Mechanics model more just and accessible futures for theatre. Their MicroCosmos encounter explores immersive theatremaking, collaborative leadership, and a desire to end the obsession with artistic “vision.”
Interdisciplinary artists and producers Jennie Hahn and Sharon Mansur are connecting performance and community through their work in Indigenous-settler relations and Arab American artist communities, respectively. In this MicroCosmos encounter, they consider the practices and experiments at the heart of their work.
Liza Bielby and paris cyan cian are in Detroit and New Orleans, respectively, building the worlds they want to be in. They discuss their work in performance collectives, connections to community, and the places and relationships that undergird their work.
kara lynch and Seema Sueko use their own artistry as a jumping off point for a conversation about methodologies for creation informed by consensus, alternative economies, community organizing, and more.
In this artistic encounter between Sharon Bridgforth and Sharon Day, creative response leads the two artists to parse connections between nature, family, performance, and language.
The MicroCosmos project convenes artists who venture into the inner dimensions of artistic practice to be in dialogue and right relation with the outer context in which we live. In this introductory encounter, the project's co-curators surface the micro in their own practice.
In 2024, the Island Shakespeare Festival in Whidbey Island, Washington, set a goal of producing “zero-waste.” They partnered with local sustainability organizations to confront their waste issue and transform the front-of-house experience for theatregoers.
The Future of Arts and Health in Policy, Infrastructure, and Culture
Friday 7 February 2025
Dallas, TX
The Arts for EveryBody Capstone Convening in Dallas, Texas is an action-oriented learning and networking opportunity for practitioners, leaders, and funders in the health, municipal, and arts sectors.
Philip Arnoult was one of the diplomats of the theatrical profession—those who made it their life’s work not to make the work but to make connections between people who make the work, crossing the invisible boundaries of countries and politics. Reflecting on Philip’s life and legacy, Susan Stroupe asks how we can continue his work.
Is hierarchy inherently unjust? Panelists from organizations modeling alternative power dig deep into what we actually mean when we say "leadership" and how this concept intersects with power, the values that drive different forms and styles of leadership, and the pros and cons of various organizational structure.
The partnership between Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition (TCTOCC) and the Racial Equity Funders Collaborative (REFC) has become a groundbreaking model in sustainable, socially engaged relationships between theatres and funders. In part two of this two-part essay, kt shorb offers up experiences from the partnership as best practices that other initiatives tackling issues around race and equity might learn from.
The partnership between Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition (TCTOCC) and the Racial Equity Funders Collaborative (REFC) has become a groundbreaking model in sustainable, socially engaged relationships between theatres and funders. In part one of this two-part essay, kt shorb traces the formation of both groups and the TCTOCC-REFC super-coalition.
