Here, you’ll find content that directly engages with the COVID-19 pandemic. From work created digitally in response to the shutdown, like La Mama’s series Downtown Variety, to advice on digital gathering, teaching theatre, and making work, this is the space for conversation about this global crisis and how to move forward.
The Latest
Essay
Alive, Unwell, and Defending Each Other
by Taylor Leigh Lamb
5 June 2025
Podcast
A Wacky Play About a Global Pandemic That Came True
Through non-narrative rock numbers, Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell, and Living in His Apartment targets contemporary societal betrayals, from COVID denialism to the genocide in Palestine. Taylor Leigh Lamb writes about the show’s genesis and its multi-pronged commitment to safety and access for audience and artists alike.
Host Tjaša Ferme chats with playwright Chisa Hutchinson about her play, Bleeding Class. Chisa was aiming to write a wacky satire about a global pandemic, but then everything came true. She says she’s not clairvoyant, but has always been just a bit before her time!
COVID protections are essential for many artists to work safely. However, they are not the norm within the theatre industry. Performer Ezra Tozian offers a practical guide for theatre workers to negotiate COVID protections for productions.
Barbara Fuchs shares findings from “For a Resilient US Theater, Post-Pandemic,” a Pandemic Preparedness Performing Arts research project which looked at how the nonprofit theatre sector responded to the COVID pandemic. The report asked what worked, where, and why, in order to recommend new measures to pave long-term stability in theatre.
Ezra Tozian, Claudia Alick, and Jon Jon Johnson discuss the need to challenge the status quo of ignoring COVID within the theatre industry and the impact that the lack of care is having on them and other disabled theatremakers.
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.
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.
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.
Amelia Parenteau chronicles the process of translating Eva Doumbia’s Autophagies from French to English and producing its tour in the United States, a project that unfolded across four years.
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.
This dynamic summary of a panel co-curated by Rachel Penny and Nikki Shaffeeullah as part of Parallel Tracks 2.0 brings together several artists, producers, and lawyers in a discussion about contracting, how it has been impacted by COVID-19, and interrogating power dynamics within the contracting process.
Morgan Davis and Jules Vodarek Hunter discuss the process of creating Fat Fables, a theatre program for fat LGBT2SQ+ artists who are twenty-nine and under.
Julia Hune-Brown and Keira Loughran discuss crafting Then Is Now, a concept album/video playlist they created through conversations with Chinese Canadian women who grew up in Toronto’s Chinatown during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
When Campo Santo decided to film their production of Star Finch’s Side Effects early in the COVID-19 pandemic, they were embarking on a creative journey that felt entirely novel and a little overwhelming. In this conversation, the production’s directors discuss development of the production’s aesthetic and the generative process they embarked on at the intersection of “film” and “play.
The International Presenting Now convening brought a collective of US-based presenters of international work together in physical space in January 2023, following almost three years of virtual conversations and events. Janice Paran details the conversations that arose around the convening’s key question: how might international presenters want to work differently?
Jose Solís joins Yura Sapi to discuss creating the BIPOC Critics Lab and co-creating the Token Theatre Friends podcast-webseries. This episode’s topics include finding beauty in the internet, how a metaphorical grain of sand can change the world, and a tarot reading for the first three months of 2023.
What does the voice of this millennium sound like? In this interview, Khumbolane Chavula provides one answer to that question by splicing together theatre, poetry, and entrepreneurship as the founder of Millesimal Poetry.
A Conversation with Moïse Touré / Une Conversation avec Moïse Touré
5 July 2022
Michelle Haner interviews Moïse Touré, artistic director of Les Inachevés, about the company’s ongoing project on the theme of hospitality and the decision to reframe the company’s work as a laboratory.
Trevor Boffone reflects on the 2022 Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) Comedy Carnaval that convened at Su Teatro in Denver, Colorado, which was comprised of productions, readings, panels, and special sessions that showcased the depth and range of Latinx comedy in theatre.
Lauren E. Turner, producing artistic director of No Dream Deferred, sits down with Amelia Parenteau to discuss their recent experiences in anti-racist facilitation work through No Dream Deferred’s service, Equity and Justice for Institutional Change.
Play House is a collectively stewarded performance space near the border of Detroit and Hamtramck that has become a place of convening and creation for the neighborhood. Richard Newman, a co-manager of the space and co-director of The Hinterlands ensemble, traces connections between creative practice, community, grief, and an outdoor ramp at Play House.
What does fiscal sponsorship do for you and your organization? Colleen Hughes, associate director of programming at Fractured Atlas, walks us through the broad array of opportunities they provide. She’ll also shed light on fundraising trends she’s seen with nonprofit organizations throughout the pandemic.
Enid Brain reflects on the unique process of creating and performing the new work Our Childhood Sucked and shares what the theatre community can learn from creating digital “non-theatre.”
