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Process

Content in this section dives into the work of making art. Whether you’re interested in creating digital work, writing a new play, blending performance and activism, or anything else specific to process, this is the place for that.

The Latest

Essay
Meeting at the Corner of Chaos and Divine
by JD Stokely
9 June 2026
Podcast
Vampires, Cowboys, and Sapphic Camp with 11th Hour Productions
by Nicolas Shannon Savard, Ciara Hannon, Saylor Lake
2 June 2026
Essay
Facilitative Directing Centers the Art
by Kimberly Senior
1 June 2026
A performer on stage with white, out-stretched wings.
Essay
12 April 2022

Theatremaker Sonia Carmona shares the impact storytelling can have on empowering marginalized groups of people from her own experience working on Roots and Wings, a HUMAN library from the Poligono Sur.

Cast members standing side by side in a field.
Essay
11 April 2022

Rodrigó Balogh and Márton Illés discuss the process of creating outdoor theatre performances and share their experience producing them with Independent Theatre Hungary.

Kunafa and Shay Teaser Image.
Podcast

With Betty Shamieh & Tracy Francis

6 April 2022

Last season we talked about on-stage representation in contemporary theatre. But what does representation look like behind the scenes and why is it important? How does the process change when there are MENA creative team members, production staff, directors, and playwrights involved from the inception of a project to its closing night? What role does this representation play in new work development? We will discuss all of this and more with playwright Betty Shamieh and artistic director of Boom Arts Tracy Francis as they share their past experiences, insight, and ideas for the future.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Scott Turner Schofield

30 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, consultant, educator Scott Turner Schofield. They trouble the TV/film industry's framing of Schofield as a singular "trans trailblazer," since as he notes, trans actors were, indeed, carving out spaces to make and support one another’s art long before we were invited into Hollywood or mainstream theatre spaces. The conversation dives into the shifts that Scott has noticed in audience response to his work over the course of the last twenty years and how those are in direct conversation with national politics.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With D’Lo

28 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, and comedian D’Lo to talk about his career and how he uses comedy and storytelling as tools for connection, education, and compassion.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Rebecca Kling

21 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with storyteller, educator, and advocate for transgender rights, Rebecca Kling. Their conversation addresses Rebecca’s work as a solo performer-turned-activist, the importance of consent in deciding to take on the trans educator role, and her radical and hilarious approach to the post-show talkback: the Strip Q and A.

A collage of several pictures of people's faces placed side by side.
Essay

A Conversation between JD Stokely and Javiera Benavente

16 March 2022

JD Stokely and Javiera Benavente discuss the ways the navigate they complexities of commoning while embracing listening, unlearning, and care in their creative practices and educational paths.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With siri gurudev

9 March 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with siri gurudev to talk about their devising practice which blends queer of color theory and performance techniques, popular music, and spirituality and to chat about their dissertation research on ritual, trauma, and healing in QTPOC performance.

3 Actors pose on stage.
Essay
1 March 2022

Annie G. Levy shares how Emerson Stage works to make their season selection process as open, collaborative, and student-driven as possible.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Azure D. Osborne-Lee

28 February 2022

Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with playwright Azure D. Osborne-Lee to talk about their play, Crooked Parts; building Black queer worlds onstage; and the mentorship, community-building, and production practices that go into bringing those worlds to life.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Dillon Yruegas

23 February 2022

Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with playwright and performer, Dillon Yruegas to talk about two productions of his play The Brunch Crowd. They talk about what a slice-of-life, kitchen sink play full of trans of color characters looks like and what kind of intervention that makes in the theatrical landscape. They dive into the importance of trans joy and queer friendship and its absence on stage. Finally, Dillon reflects on how expansive approaches to casting trans and non-binary characters and how identity-based casting might open up dialogue and create space for a much wider range of faces and experiences to be seen on stage.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Joshua Bastian Cole

16 February 2022

Nicolas Shannon Savard and Joshua Bastian Cole continue their conversation about transgender representation. They critique Time magazine’s 2014 declaration of the “transgender tipping point” of cultural visibility and explore the ways in which Hollywood’s handling of trans narratives bleeds over into the theatre, politics, and daily life for trans and gender nonconforming people.

From the Ground Up Podcast image featuring Mara Isaacs.
Podcast
15 February 2022

Tony Award-winning producer Mara Isaacs discusses how she puts collaboratively creative work in front of national audiences through her producing organization, Octopus Theatricals. This final episode of season two holds hot takes on boards, theatricality, and the connective tissue around artist-centered producing.

Gender Euphoria teaser image.
Podcast

With Joshua Bastian Cole

9 February 2022

In episode 1 (part 1) of Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with Joshua Bastian Cole to talk about popular tropes in transgender representation, gender legibility on stage, and the implications of each for trans and nonbinary theatremakers.

A large crowd walks alongside a life-sized internally controlled puppet.
Essay
7 February 2022

verity healey shares the journey and impact of Walk with Amal, an interactive, artistic project that centered on a large puppet refugee girl travelling through Europe.

Three people on stage, one standing directly under a spotlight.
Essay
1 February 2022

Nicolette Bethel reflects on the creation and significance of Competent Authority, a play that focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic in The Bahamas.

Drawn horseshoe crab that reads "We are all Invited" on its back.
Essay
31 January 2022

Can a new holiday hatch humans closer to freedom? Eli Nixon's homage proposal messes with time, place, and puppets towards building inter- and intra-species solidarities.

Close on the faces of  three actors staring into the camera.
Essay
13 January 2022

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.

Two women sitting across from each other being filmed in a living room.
Essay

Creating Non-Theatre

10 January 2022

Enid 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.”

A woman sitting with her hands clasped in front of her at a table.
Essay
6 January 2022

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.

From the Ground Up Podcast image featuring Michael Rohd.
Podcast
5 January 2022

The job of the facilitator, the logic of shared leadership, and how it all translates to directing a process. Michael Rohd stands at the forefront of ensemble-based practices equipped with questions about how we create the future that we want to be working in socially, civically, and artistically. Join us as we unpack and define what’s next.

From The Ground Up Title.
Podcast
22 December 2021

Alison Carey, formerly of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp, co-founders and artistic directors of UNIVERSES, discuss putting ensemble producers inside a major producing entity and the capacity necessary for things to fall into place.

Ten people on a Zoom call.
Essay
14 December 2021

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.

Video

A conversation with Anne Bogart about her new book: The Art of Resonance

Monday 13 December 2021
United States

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presented SEGAL TALKS, a conversation about curating, producing, and presenting theatre and performance in the time of COVID with Anne Bogart, livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network on Monday 13 December 2021 at 10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 12 p.m. CST (Chicago, UTC -6) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 18:00 GMT (London, UTC +0) / 19:00 CET (Berlin, UTC +1).

From the Ground Up Podcast image featuring Olga Garay-English
Podcast
8 December 2021

Founding Program Director for the Arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Olga Garay-English and Jeffrey Mosser discuss the revolutionary process of getting ensemble work in regional theatre spaces including her unprecedented partnership with Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Other topics include touring models, festival culture, and her experience as an international arts consultant.

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