Design

Through culturally responsive pedagogy, Bryan Stanton opened up their design classrooms to center student voices and value knowledge from many distinct cultures. They reflect on the practices they used to usher in this transformation and the profound impact it has had on students.

The potential for photosensitive reactions—like seizures or migraines—keeps some audiences out of theatres. Nicole Hughes discusses the work of EpiArts and the FlashCue Project to make theatre more accessible to these audience members by educating theatremakers about photosensitivity and providing clear standards for communicating about flashing light cues.

Access for disabled theatre artists within the theatre industry is lacking, and pathways for those in production disciplines to enter the industry are particularly neglected. Alexis Wilner highlights the inaccessibility of common pathways and offers ideas to increase access. 

Theatre departments now face steady, targeted closures and downsizing nationwide. Jacqueline E. Lawton and Rachel Pollock speak to professors impacted by these cuts and lay out actions to preserve theatre education at the university level. 

In the spirit of decentering directors as the sole owners of a production’s concept, Daphnie Sicre proposes a two-day pre-production gathering, or dalliance, for the creative team. The format of this dalliance is inspired by her group’s work at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio.

Mask maker Tara Cariaso details her process for creating new masks for Commedia dell’arte, alongside a pedagogy that removes the harmful stereotypes originally embedded in the form and creates space for more actor agency. 

​Lighting designer Porsche McGovern​ shares the results of the final year of her study on the pronouns of designers and directors working in LORT theatres, how the study came about, and what she hopes for the future.

Designers Porsche McGovern and Sherrice Mojgani discuss the impact of Porsche’s multi-year study looking at designers and directors in LORT theatres by pronouns, and how theatre leaders can better support and learn from the freelance artists they hire.

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.

Dolissa Medina details her group’s expansive design process at the Latinx Theatre Commons Designer and Director Colaboratorio. Engaging with a variety of spaces and art forms opened the group’s creative floodgates, allowing them to reach new perspectives on their work and their ways of relating to one another.

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.

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.

The Latinx Theatre Commons announces the cohort of six directors, twenty-four designers, and seven scholars/documentarians selected for the Designer and Director Colaboratorio in Portland, Oregon this summer.

Projection designer David Forsee, who brings artificial intelligence into his own design workflow, creates a toolkit for other designers interested in effectively and ethically integrating text-to-image models into their design processes.

Emily McConnell calls for a common language to categorize designers’ collaborative relationships with directors. To find that common ground, theatremakers will have to reject the notion that each production requires a unique approach to collaboration.

Playwright John J King shares his experience with and advice for centering sustainability in theatre productions.