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Gender

Content here is about theatre works that explicitly address gender or about issues around gender in the field at large. Don’t miss MJ Kaufman’s series Gender Power and Politics or studies on who designs and directs in LORT theatres by pronoun and women’s leadership in LORT theatres. Many of these pieces also take an intersectional approach, such as “We Have Suffered Enough: The Cost of Performing Trauma for Women of Color” and “Let Them Speak: It’s Time to See More Works from Women Writers of Color on Stages Across America.”

The Latest

The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy
Podcast
The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy
With Guest H. May
by Nicolas Shannon Savard, H. May
13 September 2023
Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable
Podcast
Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable
With Guests David Silvernail, Janet Werther, Victoria Lafave, Jordan Ealey, and Kelli Crump
by Nicolas Shannon Savard, David Silvernail, Janet Werther, Victoria LaFave, Jordan Ealey, Kelli Crump
6 September 2023
Composting Queer Trauma through a Collaborative Process in SEAL
Essay
Composting Queer Trauma through a Collaborative Process in SEAL
by Rachel Pottern Nunn, Dante Fuoco, Clara Weist
24 August 2023
Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile image.
The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy
Podcast

The Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree is more of a Galaxy

With Guest H. May

13 September 2023

Dr. H. May joins host Nicolas Shannon Savard, who introduces the Queer-Trans Performance Family Tree Project, an interactive, open-access digital exhibit visually connecting trans artists across the United States to the collectives and communities who have sustained our work. This episode explores the role of mentorship in both the research for the project and in their own work as gender nonconforming theatremakers.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile images.
Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable
Podcast

Queer Archival Praxis Roundtable

With Guests David Silvernail, Janet Werther, Victoria Lafave, Jordan Ealey, and Kelli Crump

6 September 2023

What role does white supremacy play in the creation of the queer theatre canon? What power and what responsibility do we—as queer theatremakers, historians, and educators—have to challenge canons and archives that define “queer” almost exclusively as white and cisgender? Artist-scholars Janet Werther, Victoria LaFave, Jordan Ealey, David Silvernail, and Kelli Crump join host Nicolas Shannon Savard to tackle these questions and to queer the archive.

A man stands on stage in the middle of a spotlight, with a projection behind him of him as a child.
Composting Queer Trauma through a Collaborative Process in SEAL
Essay

Composting Queer Trauma through a Collaborative Process in SEAL

24 August 2023

As writer-performer Dante Fuoco and director Clara Wiest came together to rework Dante’s autobiographical solo show SEAL, they developed a process that centered intentional care and trauma-informed practices. In this interview with Rachel Pottern Nunn, Clara and Dante reflect upon the production, discuss the relationship between writer/performer and director, and share insights from their generative process.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile images.
Making Space for Queer Futurity in Texas
Podcast

Making Space for Queer Futurity in Texas

16 August 2023

Austin’s pop princess, p1nkstar, shares the story of her evolution from performance artist creating a pop star persona for Instagram to real life pop star to community leader creating spaces for fellow trans artists to showcase their work in Texas. This episode also features guest co-host Melissa Lin Sturges, coordinator of the annual Doric Wilson Panel for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) LGBTQ+ Focus Group.

A woman wearing a lacey crown stands alone on a carpeted floor with a hand extended in a "halt" gesture.
Anti-Terror Feminist Director Is in Russian Jail for “Justifying Terrorism”
Essay

Anti-Terror Feminist Director Is in Russian Jail for “Justifying Terrorism”

2 August 2023

After Russian courts found that Svetlana Petriychuk’s documentary theatre piece Finist the Brave Falcon “justified terrorism” due to its feminist aims, Petriychuk and director Zhenya Berkovich were jailed. Viktor Vilisov discusses the production, clarifying the production’s aims to amplify the experiences of Russian women whose attempts to flea Russian patriarchy has landed them in oppressive marriages to Syrian ISIS fighters.

Gender Euphoria teaser image with guest headshot.
Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description
Podcast

Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description

With Guests H. May and Liz Thomson

26 July 2023

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.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile image.
Making Space: Consent, Collaboration, and Queer Access Intimacy
Podcast

Making Space: Consent, Collaboration, and Queer Access Intimacy

With Guests J.C. Pankratz and Emmett Podgorski

12 July 2023

J.C. Pankratz returns to the podcast to reflect on the first full production of their play Seahorse, directed by Nicolas Shannon Savard, starring Emmett Podgorski. Nicolas, J.C., and Emmett discuss how the collaborative process, from auditions through closing night, was informed by queer community building, access intimacy, and consent-based practice. They offer behind-the-scenes perspectives and concrete examples of how tools and ideas discussed in previous episodes played out in practice.

A performer proudly wields a prop weight overhead during a show.
Cornerstone Theater Company Brings Larissa FastHorse’s Wicoun Home
Essay

Cornerstone Theater Company Brings Larissa FastHorse’s Wicoun Home

11 July 2023

Robert Hubbard reviews Larissa FastHorse’s Wicoun, a transformative story of a teen finding power through gender and cultural identity—with the support of some Lakota superheroes.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile images.
Queer-Trans Intimacy: One Foot in the Academy and the Other in the Nightclub
Podcast

Queer-Trans Intimacy: One Foot in the Academy and the Other in the Nightclub

With Guests Raja Benz and Joy Brooke Fairfield

5 July 2023

Nicolas Shannon asks Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz how their intimacy work is informed by queer theory and critical theory. Their conversation bounces between queer of color theory, decolonial theory, disability theory, and the dim glow of the night club; between past, present, and future; between the ideas they’re sure of and the ones they’re working out in real time. Bonus! It comes with dozens of recommended readings.

One performer lifts another toward another performer dressed in a green fringe costume.
Grief (and Humor) in Climate Change Theatre
Essay

Grief (and Humor) in Climate Change Theatre

30 June 2023

Genevieve Simon reflects on the process of writing Bloom Bloom Pow, a play that makes space for collective grief by staging small-town chaos against a backdrop of the harmful algal bloom crisis in the Great Lakes region.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile image.
Queer Intimacies in Too-Near Dystopian Futures
Podcast

Queer Intimacies in Too-Near Dystopian Futures

With Guest Leanna Keyes

28 June 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard and playwright Leanna Keyes discuss her play Doctor Voynich and Her Children. What does it mean to stage trans stories about queer motherhood, abortion, intimacy, choice, and power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the ongoing legislative attacks on reproductive rights and the trans community?

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Queer-Trans Intimacy Work: Cracking Gender Open
Podcast

Queer-Trans Intimacy Work: Cracking Gender Open

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.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Queer Intimacies, Trans Futures, Grief, and Radical Hope in Seahorse
Podcast

Queer Intimacies, Trans Futures, Grief, and Radical Hope in Seahorse

With Guest J.C. Pankratz

14 June 2023

Host Nicolas Shannon Savard interviews playwright J.C. Pankratz about their play Seahorse, a poetic, stream-of-consciousness one-person show about a trans man’s attempts at artificial insemination following his husband’s unexpected death. The conversation will dive into the play’s approach to the “messiness” of imagining futures you can’t yet see and its use of magical realism to invite audiences to sit inside that mess as witnesses and confidants.

Gender Euphoria teaser image featuring guest profile image.
Making Space for Thriving Queer Communities Through Applied Theatre
Podcast

Making Space for Thriving Queer Communities Through Applied Theatre

With Guest Dr. Jesse O’Rear

7 June 2023

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.”

Four actors sit in a classroom set.
Larissa FastHorse on Indigenizing Theatre
Essay

Larissa FastHorse on Indigenizing Theatre

6 June 2023

Holly L. Derr talks with Larissa FastHorse about Indigeneity and misogyny in The Thanksgiving Play, using satire to create change, and rewriting Peter Pan.

Portraits of  Julia Varley and Eugenio Barba.
A Conversation with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley / Odin Teatret
Video

A Conversation with Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley / Odin Teatret

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.

Illustration of several different pairs of people holding hands with each other.
Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective
Essay

Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective

31 March 2023

Hari Somaskantha and Gitanjali exchange letters discussing their work with Teardrop Collective, a Toronto-based group that centers stories of queer, trans, Deaf, and hearing people of Tamil, Sri Lankan, and South Asian descent.

From the Ground Up Podcast Teaser image.
What Ensemble Touring Can Learn from Dance
Podcast

What Ensemble Touring Can Learn from Dance

29 March 2023

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.

Illustration of various cushioned chairs.
Imagining Creative Fat Futures
Essay

Imagining Creative Fat Futures

29 March 2023

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.

An illustration of a clothesline with a film strip in front of it.
Making Then Is Now During a Pandemic with Our Chinese Canadian Feminist Elders
Essay

Making Then Is Now During a Pandemic with Our Chinese Canadian Feminist Elders

28 March 2023

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.

Building Our Own Tables Season 3 teaser image with guest headshot.
Full of Wonder with Mica Rose
Podcast

Full of Wonder with Mica Rose

15 March 2023

Theatremaker Mica Rose joins Yura Sapi this week and shares about co-creating Asian American Theatre Artists of Boston. Topics for this episode include moving from morning routine to waking ritual, the power of circles and cycles, and a grounding meditation.

Building Our Own Tables Season 3 teaser image with guest headshot.
Trust Your Gifts with Kelundra Smith
Podcast

Trust Your Gifts with Kelundra Smith

1 March 2023

This week, Kelundra Smith sits down with Yura Sapi to discuss building her own table as a playwright and shares the process and inspiration behind some of her latest works. Topics for this episode include affirmations, changing hierarchical structures, and moving beyond a sense of urgency.

A group of protesters with various posters smile for a photo in Times Square in New York City.
A Dream Deferred: Black, Indigenous, and Women+ of Color Playwright-Activists
Essay

A Dream Deferred: Black, Indigenous, and Women+ of Color Playwright-Activists

30 January 2023

Yvette Heyliger reflects on her experience as a Black woman artivist and discusses the racial and gender inequities in the theatre field.

Two actors in yellow-green outfits standing over another actor in white lying on a table.
Female Stories from Kosovo: How Two Plays Look at the Loneliness of Balkan Women
Essay

Female Stories from Kosovo: How Two Plays Look at the Loneliness of Balkan Women

10 January 2023

Theatremaker verity healey discusses two plays from Kosovo’s 2022 Theatre Showcase that highlight Balkan women’s stories and struggles.

Critical Stages in Malawian Contemporary Theatre teaser image with the title at the top and a picture of the guest in the middle.
Theatre as a Tool for Menstrual Hygiene Education
Podcast

Theatre as a Tool for Menstrual Hygiene Education

30 November 2022

Lydia Deborah Banda infuses theatre into community initiatives that work toward gender equality, educate girls about menstruation, and provide leadership and support opportunities in schools and prisons. In this interview, she shares her experiences conducting these initiatives in Malawi and touring internationally to Germany.