Political Theatre

Suzan Shown Harjo, a recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, discusses the prevalence of redface on American stages and how disrespect of Native identity extends to land and bodies.

Native voices week continues! August: Osage County’s Kimberly Guerrero explores her work on the show, and what lesson the American theatre can learn from it.

Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle kicks off Native Voices Week, “Instead of Redface,” with a personal story about how she came to playwriting from law school and the imperative to tell Native stories.

Activist and artist Yvette Heyliger shares her petition for new legislation mandating women artists receive equitable funding from nonprofit arts organizations and institutions.

Some could argue that a play like Burq Off is not the right place to begin to understand the world of the Muslim Diaspora in Europe... But Manzoor herself provides some of that context, throwing statistics into her monologues almost as if her drama were a form of journalism.

Co-founders of St Lou Fringe Em Piro and Tara Daniels talk about how artists and institutions can continue the conversation started after #Ferguson, and how important it is to do so.

The Dreary Coast is a site-specific immersive work that took place in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, and used elements of Greek and Roman mythology, Dante’s Inferno, black metal music, and the canal’s actual history to journey its audience through one of the most polluted waterways in the United States.

Keith Josef Adkins shares excerpts from Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments, ten-minute monologues commissioned in response to the recent events in Ferguson and Staten Island.

Keith Josef Adkins shares excerpts from Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments, ten-minute monologues commissioned in response to the recent events in Ferguson and Staten Island.

Director Lisa DiFranza employs Living Newspapers—an 80-year-old theatrical form that combines theatre and journalism—to share compelling narratives about twenty-first century homelessness in Chicago. 

Based on interviews with local teachers and students about the current educational climate, Forgotten Futures creates space for discussion of the dysfunction plaguing Chicago Public Schools.

At this historic moment in which it is still quite dangerous to be a black man in the United States, Native Son offers an important provocation. For all the world has changed since 1939, the production asks us to take a good hard look at what has not.

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.

Professor Jorge Huerta gives a short overview about the precedents that led to the historic and revolutionizing event, focusing on the growth of Chicano/a theatre festivals since 1970. 

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.

MJ Kaufman shares insight on the necessity of trans voices being developed and acknowledged in diverse, multi-faceted, and complex narratives. 

When we teach, how do we discuss something truly important? Specifically, how could I talk about the murder of an unarmed black man the same age as my students? What is taught in the not teaching? What is not covered in a course? When we omit difficult conversations or troubling current events, what does that teach students about what is important, worthy of attention, urgent?

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?

Derek Goldman offers an overview of the production of Syria: The Trojan Women.