Hosts Jordan Ealey and Leticia Ridley interview Kaja Dunn, who is an intimacy professional, director, actor, and scholar. They discuss her journey as a theatre artist, the importance of intimacy coordinator for theatre and television, and Kaja’s own artistry and creativity.
In this episode, playwright and dramaturg Adam Ashraf Elsayigh joins co-hosts Nabra Nelson and Marina Johnson to unpack what it means to put queer SWANA characters on stage and discuss the future of representation in the United States.
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.
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.
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.
After directing Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play at her midwestern college, Indigenous theatremaker Sierra Rosetta traveled to New York to see the same play on Broadway. She discusses the way this milestone production—which made FastHorse the first known Native American woman playwright on Broadway—and her own work push for a future in which Native theatremakers’ presence on professional stages is standard, not novel.
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.
Panel Discussion with Residents of Concord Park, Pennsylvania
Saturday 22 July 2023
Pennsylvania
Housing rights activist Morris Milgram developed Concord Park outside of Philadelphia as an interracial community at a time when covenants prohibiting the sale of homes to African Americans and other minority groups were routinely included in deeds. Children of the Wonderland Puppet Theatre puppeteers discussed their experience growing up in a neighborhood that intentionally sought to fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of beloved community and the role that the Wonderland Puppet Theatre played in unifying neighbors.
With Guests Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz
21 June 2023
In the first part of a two-part conversation on queer-trans intimacy direction and choreography, Nicolas talks with Theatrical Intimacy Education faculty members Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz about their courses Working with Trans & Non-Binary Artists and Staging Intimacy Beyond the Binary. They discuss crafting courses that are less Trans-101 and more cracking gender open, resisting patriarchal and colonialist scripts, and bringing queer culture into the rehearsal room.
Tony Garcia and Claudia de Vasco share their experiences becoming immersed in the Chicano movement, which has informed both of their careers in artistic leadership.
Richard Falcon and Fran Astorga discuss the need for inclusive spaces that led to founding their own companies, the road blocks they've pushed against, and the legacy they hope to create as part of the teatro field.
Munroe Shearer discusses the problem of white queer men’s positionality excusing them from anti-racism and anti-misogyny practices in theatre leadership.
Delving into the Challenges and Opportunities of Bringing Diverse Stories to the Stage
Wednesday 7 June 2023
United States
The panel will be joined by a MENA American theatre class at California Polytechnic State University, designed by professor Hala Baki to imagine how MENA theatre can contribute to a more inclusive American culture, and a plays and styles drama class at the University of Washington, taught by Mona Merhi, who focused the course on topics related to race, ethnicity, and identity representation by examining the works of playwrights from the MENA region alongside modern and contemporary Western texts.
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard talks with Dr. Jesse O’Rear about applied theatre with LGBTQ students on college campuses. Jesse describes some alternatives to traditional models of bystander intervention and diversity trainings to create embodied learning opportunities for LGBTQ students to step into positions of leadership and for audience-participants to practice “kinesthetic allyship.”
Holly L. Derr talks with Larissa FastHorse about Indigeneity and misogyny in The Thanksgiving Play, using satire to create change, and rewriting Peter Pan.
“There are three billion Muslims out there with inherently unique stories and you keep telling the same one. What does that mean?” “It means people want to keep hearing it.” Lines from Rehana Lew Mirza’s play Hatefuck ring truer than ever in a time where Muslim representation is growing yet still predictably homogenous.
Theatre as Politics by Other Means: Floating Islands, Transit Next Forum, and the Magdalena Project
Tuesday 30 May 2023
New York City
Join us for a talk with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley about their current projects, including the 2022 Living Archive Floating Islands project, conceived by Eugenio, which will be installed this year at the Bernardini Library in Lecce, Italy, and Transit Next Forum—Theatre and Women, a collective created by Julia to raise opportunities for women in theatre and increase the awareness of women’s contribution to contemporary theatre.
Jaan Whitehead examines the history of boards in the theatre sector and argues for a better way to approach governance, including through changes to a board’s membership, structure, and values.
Star Finch and Ellen Sebastian Chang, friends and artistic collaborators in the Bay Area, have a conversation about their local theatre scene’s recent but long overdue racial reckoning, scraping together a creative life, the institutionalization of artists, and more.
Jacqueline Flores and Abel López, co-curators of the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront series, discuss their careers, their sense of cultural identity as Latinx theatremakers, and importance of intergenerational dialogue.
Olga Sanchez Saltveit and Shayna Schlosberg continue their conversation for the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront series, focusing on mentorship, trade-offs they have made, and their shared experiences working in service of equity.
Latinx Theatre Commons producer Jacqueline Flores introduces the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront Series, which amplifies the history and work of Latinx teatros through conversations between established theatremakers with future leaders of the field.
Playwrights Star Finch, Psalmayene 24, and J. Nicole Brooks chat about Black playwrights on Broadway, and what being produced there represents to them.
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.
