Festivals, often organized within a specific geographic community or around a theme, are a great way for different works to be in conversation with each other. Content in this section primarily focuses around recapping theatre festivals and analyzing multiple works that were featured.
Yaşam Özlem Gülseven interviews Davit Khorbaladze about his play UNLOVE: an experimental work based on his personal documentary material about the loss of love during a time of global crisis and the identity crisis that followed. The two explore how UNLOVE and the rest of the “UN-” trilogy highlights the shocking resemblance between intimate experiences and global events.
Kaneza Schaal shares the community practices she witnessed at her aunt’s home in Rwanda, and how theatremakers should embrace these practices when we create work together.
After being asked to share his thoughts on the future of international touring, Why Not Theatre founder Ravi Jain offers some of what he’s learned about engaging “new” audiences and building lasting relationships between artists and presenters.
Hana Sharif reflects on lessons learned during the dramatically shifting theatrical landscape in recent years, and the necessity of artistic leaders embracing abundance during this moment.
Roma Heroes International Theater Festival, Sixth Edition
Presented by the Independent Theater Hungary
Wednesday 20 March - Wednesday 27 March
Independent Theater Hungary presents the Roma Heroes International Theater Festival, Sixth Edition, livestreaming on the commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Wednesday 20 March to Wednesday 27 March 2024 at 11 a.m. PDT (Los Angeles, UTC -7) / 1 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 2 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 18:00 GMT (London, UTC +1) / 19:00 CET (Budapest, UTC +1) / 20:00 EET (Bucharest, UTC +2).
What Makes St. Louis a Flourishing Ecosystem for New Plays and Cooperative Production Models
13 February 2024
Jacob Juntunen traces the collaborative network of theatres and theatremakers in St. Louis that share resources and make the city a rich environment for new play development.
Visioning Emergent Paths for a Stronger Sector of National and International Performing Arts
Friday 12 January 2024
New York City
The 2024 Under the Radar Symposium convened 250 arts presenters, producers, service orgs, funders, and artists toward rigorous, facilitated small-table discussions, taking a deeper dive into visioning emergent paths for a stronger sector of national and international performing arts.
Performance, Pro-Democracy Protest, and Activism Across Cultures
13 November 2023
Kristin Idaszak reflects on experiencing Theatre Du Polet’s Be Water, My Friend at the Prague Quadrennial. This protest art about Hong Kong’s fight for democracy in 2019, performed in the Czech Republic, crosses cultures, political regimes, and time periods.
An Array of Short Performances, Readings, and Panels from the Artists at the Forefront of the Contemporary New York City Artistic Landscape
Wednesday 11 October to Thursday 19 October 2023
New York City
PRELUDE is a place to discover what voices are shaping the future of theatre and performance in New York City, to observe, engage, commune, and critique. PRELUDE offers an array of short performances, readings, and screenings—a completely free survey of the current New York moment and the work being prepared for the next season and beyond—as well as new commissions and panel discussions with artists, scholars, and performers.
An Art Festival in Rwanda Converses with the Past and Celebrates Our Shared Present
5 October 2023
Giulianna Marchese discusses productions from the Ubumuntu Art Festival, which is held annually at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. Throughout this year’s festival, performances explored what it means to be a human post-tragedy—the highs and the lows.
Staging Dystopias of Desire and the Poetics of Grief
27 June 2023
Theresa May discusses the way that two contemporary plays with dystopian settings—Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying by Jessica Huang and Somewhere by Melissa Treviño Orta—lean away from typical tropes of destruction and individualism by instead centering care, kinship, reciprocity, and interdependence.
Chantal Bilodeau introduces a new installment of the Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series, which focuses contemporary plays and playwrights that explore the intimate impacts of climate change on both individuals and communities.
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.
Taking Care: Supporting Delegates with Invisible Disabilities at Festivals and Showcases
15 May 2023
Second Hand Dance embarked upon research on support for artists with access needs after artistic director Rosie Heafford had to pull out of a festival that did not provide sufficient accommodations for her invisible disability. She shares takeaways from that research in the form of actionable steps that festivals, showcases, and industry events can implement.
Amelia Parenteau introduces the We Will Dream: New Works Festival, a festival showcasing new plays by Black playwrights originating from or working in the American South.
Miranda Wright, producer and executive director at Los Angeles Performance Practice, and Jeffrey Mosser discuss how Miranda has developed a presenting organization for sharing ambitious, collaboratively created work over the last ten years, as well as what she’s learned from some major arts funding research.
Jeffrey Mosser connects with Willa Jo Zollar, who is founder, chief visioning partner, and MacArthur Genius at Urban Bush Women. Together they talk about touring, the festival circuit, and strategy necessary to sustain a company for thirty years.
Reflecting on the Timeliness of Polish Theatre at Kraków’s Divine Comedy Theatre Festival
2 March 2023
The Divine Comedy Theatre Festival in Kraków, Poland explored the theme of “Polish Taboo” across its thirty-two productions this year. Howard Shalwitz, who attended the festival as part of an American delegation of artists building connections between the United States and Poland, shares his experience attending the festival.
Producing Malawi’s First Multidisciplinary Arts Festival
9 January 2023
When filmmaker Thomas Chibambo founded the Blantyre Arts Festival in 2009, it was Malawi’s first multi-disciplinary arts festival. He joins host Fumbani Innot Phiri, Jr. to discuss the Blantyre Arts Festival’s current plans to better support theatrical performance and his own work to establish an Arts Council in Malawi.
Exodus and the Autobiography of War at Tbilisi International Festival
5 January 2023
Yaşam Özlem Gülseven interviews Mikheil Charkviani about his work on Exodus, a production that traded grand historical narratives for granular perspectives on the impact of war in Georgia. Their interview, like the production, hinges on an important question: how do we learn to live with the past?
Maxwell Ciphinga, better known as Max DC, has weathered massive changes in the audience, form, and funding of Malawian theatre throughout his four-decade career. In this interview, he shares his perspective on the industry and discusses his policy and producorial work as the president of Malawi’s new National Theatre Association.
In this special episode, Marina and Nabra sit down with Lebanese actor, theatremakers, and peacebuilder Raffi Feghali to talk about the Buffer Fringe Festival. Buffer Fringe is an annual festival with a mission for peacebuilding and social justice, organized by Home for Cooperation and situated in the buffer zone in Cyprus. Buffer Fringe runs 7-9 October 2022, presenting three days of international, interdisciplinary, experimental performances under the theme of Pockets (beyond). Join us as we explore improv in Lebanon, experimental theatre in a geographically contentious area, and artistic curation for peacebuilding.
Multidisciplinary artist Ash Marinaccio sits down with the co-founder and artistic director of ASHTAR Theatre Iman Aoun to discuss this year’s ASHTAR International Youth Festival in Palestine.