Process

Carlyle Brown’s Down in Mississippi is a celebration of a movement that gave birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Brown sat down with Todd London in October 2020 to discuss the creative process, historical context, and contemporary resonance of his play.

Ezra Brain reflects on the unique process of creating and performing the new work Our Childhood Sucked and shares what the theatre community can learn from creating digital “non-theatre.”

Michael Dewhatley sits down with playwright and director KJ Sanchez to talk about her experiences making plays based on real events. They discuss process, responsibility, perspective, and how to create without an agenda.

E.M. Lewis and a group of theatre artists connected with Artists Repertory Theatre come together to mark the ways they make it through the strange, dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite prolonged uncertainty across the theatre industry and the world, they find community in one another and strength in storytelling.

Eve Bernfeld discusses creating a culture of care in her Alexander Technique classes by paying attention to embodiment. She asks: What if we heal the false rift between mind and body in our theatre making and training?

Artist and health and wellness educator Molly Schenck discusses how stress, trauma, and burnout can show up in creative spaces and offers advice on how theatremakers can work from a trauma-informed lens.

Kofoworola Owokotomo shares her experience directing a new production of The Vagina Monologues that explicitly addressed women’s oppression in contemporary Nigerian society.

Playwright John J King shares his experience with and advice for centering sustainability in theatre productions.

In this entry of Devising Our Future, Aly Perry asks, “How might we position and design theatre as an essential space for healing, pleasure, and connection through an intertwining and interdependent realm of the senses?

Kofoworola Owokotomo shares the theatre for development processes she undertook with a team of students to tackle issues of drug abuse, tribalism, and poor attitudes towards education in two Nigerian communities.

Tara Brooke Watkins reflects on the legacy of Robbie McCauley, who challenged the status quo of theatre systems, from the classroom to the rehearsal room to productions.

Jacob Juntunen shares how the MFA playwriting program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale adapted their new play festival for the online world and how open-access software and streaming platforms helped students at the rural school transcend geography.

Alli St. John shares a guide she developed for directors of youth theatre to prioritize consent and safe practices for staging theatrical intimacy.

Luane Davis Haggerty shares successes, learnings, and innovations from the Deaf theatre community over the past year of pandemic performance.

Fumbani Innot Phiri Jr. details the creative process of the production of The Vagina Monologues that took place during 16 Days of Activism in Malawi and offers his thoughts, as an audience member, on the show’s big impact.

Emily LeQuesne discusses space as it relates to puppetry and shares a practical, five-step dramaturgy system for puppet theatre, which she developed, called the Mosaic Scale.