Community-Engaged Theatre

Dramaturg Sara Brookner interviews actor/director Megan Simcox about equitable casting, and why they founded ACTive Roles Theatre Company.

Actor and former Naa Kahidi Theatre ensemble member Allan Hayton(Gwich’in) reflects on the history of the company and how theatre can be used as a tool for community building and healing.

Georgina Young-Ellis looks at the history of the innovative Mexican theatre company Teatro Línea de Sombra, its connection to Portland, Oregon, and two of their projects: Amarillo and Rebuilding Small Territories.

Amelia Parenteau explores the value of bringing theatre and the humanities into the medical field through the collaboration between Philadelphia’s Lantern Theater Company and the Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

Tammie Pollard details the history of military theatre in Europe, explores its benefits, and looks at the challenges it faces today.

Leilani Squire explores the healing power of writing through her experience of working with veterans to write a play about their time at war and sharing their stories with the community.

Maria Vlachou, Executive Director of Acesso Cultura | Access Culture, a not-for-profit that promotes access to cultural participation in Portugal, writes about work being done in the country to break down structural and geographical barriers to arts and culture.

Yan Chen talks with poet, performer, and playwright Kit Yan about the intersections of genre and intersections of identity in his work.

Alison Weller reflects on the process of writing Boundless, a play about a fishing community on Cape Cod that faces climate change every day.

An interview with Nancy Smith-Watson of Feast of Crispian and Tim Schleis, an army veteran and one of FOC’s actors.

Jonathan Mandell reports on the Martin Segal Theatre Center's 2018 Theatre and Resistance Symposium, and lists ten things theatre community can do right now to make a change.

Jordan Schwartz, director of literary programs and outreach at Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, discusses a project that originated at the Indiana Women’s Prison and culminated in a production in the neighborhood that was the setting of the story.

Performer Stephanie Hayes reflects on how motherhood helped her reinvent her relationship to her own creativity.

Maureen White shares what emerged at the March 2017 arts and military convening “Art in the Service of Understanding,” produced by the New England Foundation for the Arts and HowlRound.

Thomas Schmidt talks about the recent protest at the Berlin Volksbühne over the change of leadership and immersive theatre in Germany.

Randy Wyatt examines how Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, explored the question of mounting contemporary work in a diverse world with limited resources and within a ‘closed’ academic context through a community-based/academic hybrid production of Caryl Churchill's Love and Information.

Theatre journalist Jim O’Quinn writes about eighty-three year old Yvonne Bechet, whose life and work inspired a new play about policing and racial justice in her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Playwright Lisa Biggs and director Kristin Horton discuss the process of developing After/Life, a new play about the 1967 Rebellion in Detroit, Michigan with Detroit community members.