Ashley Marinaccio examines the importance of youth theatre in Palestine through the work of a number of organizations, including ASHTAR Theatre, the Freedom Theatre, and Al Rowwad Cultural and Theater Training Center.

Tammie Pollard details the history of military theatre in Europe, explores its benefits, and looks at the challenges it faces today.

Playwright Renée Darline Roden talks about her travels to Israel and Palestine to gain inspiration for a new play and encountering what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the danger of a single story.”

Theatre activist Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn reflects on the founding of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization, a political theatre group that has been working together for over ten years to create social change.

Jessica Litwak, artistic director of the H.E.A.T Collective, explores the growing field of artist rights and safety, and talks about her dedication to “art of service,” the work that serves communities by facilitating creative personal and social change.

Artistic Director Roman Baca discusses Aggressed and This is War, two dance theatre pieces by Exit12 Dance Company inspired by indigenous war dances.

Jonathan Wei, Executive Director of The Telling Project, meditates on war and the military, advocating art as an investigative tool for understanding and transformation.

Dr. Arthur S. DeGroat writes about the power art has to accurately communicate the experience of war, and the importance of that in our current era.

Renowned choreographer and creator of the Critical Response Method, Liz Lerman, addresses the experience of war in her life and work.

Jamil Khoury writes about curating a series of six staged readings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that power of theatre to speak to controversial issues.

Abraham Benson-Goldberg discusses Khan Theatre’s production of Philoctetes, examining the intersections of young soldiers, heroism, war, and politics.

Director and educator Jessica Bauman writes about her experience teaching theatre in a refugee camp in Kenya.

Paul S. Flores traces the path to creating and touring his play PLACAS through community engagment with acknowedgment and palabra, and offers suggestions to supporting peace within extremely marginalized communities in conflict when making theater.

Patricia Davis on Mosaic Theatre's US premiere in Washington, D.C. of I Shall Not Hate, based on the life of Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish.

Patricia Davis interviews Ron Menzel, an actor in Studio Theatre's production of Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica in Washington, DC.

José Torres-Tama writes about his experience in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, ten years ago.

Martha Steketee on Daniel Talbott’s ghost story of a sand-bound ship of fools and the exquisite possibility of forgiveness. 

Jonathan Mandell on Belarus Free Theatre's Trash Cuisine, playing through May 17 at La Mama ETC in New York City.

George Brant’s Grounded, at Olney Theatre, is a fast-paced, suspenseful, and moving one-woman show about a drone operator’s struggle to play two roles: annihilator and mother. 

In his last installment, Brendan McCall talks with Nicolai Khalezin, one of the founders of Belarus Free Theatre about art, exile, and if theatre has any impact on politics.

Muslim theater artist Hafiz Karmali discusses the 12th-century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds and the overlap of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian performance traditions.

In this installment, Brendan explores what happened when he directed some of the plays from the Belarusian Dream Theater at Belarus’ exiled university, resulting in differing perspectives.

In addition to new works by Belarusian playwrights, writers as far-flung as Europe and the United States, Australia and New Zealand, ended up making excellent contributions. The Belarusian Dream Theater project linked playwrights with more than a dozen independent presenting groups in Europe and North America, who donated their time and talents to assemble the collaborators necessary to present as many of the twenty-five new plays as each group wanted.

Bertie Ferdman interviews Anne Hamburger about Basetrack Live, a multimedia theatre production inspired by Basetrack: One-Eight, a web project created in 2010 by photojournalists embedded with US Marines fighting in southern Afghanistan.

While I was reaping the benefits of working internationally, my Belarusian friends were living as a theater company in exile. What could I do to help make a difference? What tools could I use, as a theater artist, to break down this silence, censorship, and oppressive regime?