There’s so much to be learned from history, and theatre is no exception. If you’re looking to dive into theatre’s past, the Theatre History Podcast is the perfect place to start.
The Latest
Video
We Begin With Classics: How To Radically Impact the Theater Landscape
Monday 30 March 2026
New York City
Video
A Book Celebration of Late Stage
Theatre, Aging, and the Legacy of Elinor Fuchs
Thursday 19 March 2026
New York City
Video
A Book Celebration of Marc Robinson's American Performance in 1976
An Anthology of Eight New Plays from Trans Playwrights
Sunday 14 December 2025
New York City
Hear directly from the creators about what inspired them to write the plays, the creative process in bringing them to life, how they fit into the contemporary play landscape, and what we love about them.
The 2025 Edwin Booth Award honors a person, company, or organization whose work bridges professional and academic theatre. We seek to foreground the emerging/emergent as a product of resilience, reclamation, and urgency under contemporary and contemporaneous constraints.
Founder of the Black Rep, Ron Himes, was an arts patron as a young man turned theatre founder. Undergoing several name changes since its conception, the Black Rep’s evolution is rooted in resourcefulness and an investment in young people.
Lass uns die Welt vergessen: Volksoper 1938 stages Austria’s fascist past, reckoning with the ghosts of Nazism and their legacies. For Jordan Schildcrout, the docudrama-metamusical becomes an opportunity to interrogate Austria’s history—and to imagine the future of the United States.
Junior Programs, Inc brought the values of democracy and racial and ethnic diversity to children across the United States through an innovative, decentralized model that featured comprehensive educational partnerships. Joan Lancourt offers their approach as a potential inspiration for the contemporary moment.
For almost forty years, Real Women Have Curves has pulled audiences in with its story of Latine women in a sewing factory taking charge of their own destinies. Carlos Morton traces the story’s path from play to film to Broadway musical, affirming the power at its core.
In March 2025, the Latinx Theatre Commons convened a daylong symposium to honor and explore the work of María Irene Fornés. Anna Dolores Novak shares how the day brought together long-time Fornés scholars and newcomers who joined together to cultivate her legacy via infinite transformation of her work.
In March 2025, the Latinx Theatre Commons convened a daylong symposium to honor and explore the work of María Irene Fornés. Benjamin Gillespie reflects on the day, which served as a reaffirmation of the community that continues to grow around Fornés’s influence, even after her passing.
Leticia and Jordan delve into Zora Neale Hurston as a theatre artist and consider her plays, performances, and theories of dramaturgy and theatremaking.
Josephine Lee discusses the casting and performance choices of the 2024 Gypsy revival—from Audra McDonald’s Rose to a Chinese waitress in yellowface—to consider what they signal about the complex histories of racial performance that continue to influence theatre today.
Celebrate the Publication of the Latest Edition of Theatre Research Resources in New York City
Monday 24 March 2025
New York City
The Segal Center brings together several archivists and librarians from across the city to talk about their collections, the archiving process, and why it is important for scholars and artists alike to engage directly with theatre's material past.
After experiencing how collectively reckoning with traumatic queer theatre history can also be joyful in his classroom, professor John Michael DiResta led a series of readings of queer period plays from the last half-century. He reflects on the way this process led to community building and healing beyond his expectations.
Teaching commedia dell’arte to theatre students can be a powerful way for them to gain useful skills. But it can also cause great harm. In this essay, Tara Cariaso explains the potential harms inherent to the form, and the need to reimagine commedia to create stories centered on joy, justice, and liberation.
Sharing Our Stories About Actor, Director, Producer, and Global Theatre Connector Philip Arnoult
Saturday 7 September 2024
New York City
Join us this Saturday, 7 September, as Philip Arnoult’s family, friends, and collaborators gather at the Baltimore Theatre Project to celebrate his life and work through his way of connecting: telling stories.
Through a Wallace Foundation grant, scholars from the Latinx Theatre Commons co-authored a concept paper comprised of histories, strategies, and suggestions for archiving Latine theatre in all its forms and technologies. Carla Della Gatta introduces the paper with an executive summary and highlights from the report.
In the last episode of the fourth season of Kunafa and Shay—which was a historical and classical Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) theatre season—Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson reflect on the season, give some additional insight, and provide a broader overview of their framework for historical and classical theatre.
Dr. Samer Al-Saber joins hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson for a conversation around resistant ventriloquism and postcolonial courtesy. Dr. Al-Saber also shares stories from his upcoming book about the Palestinian theatre movement in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson learn from Dr. Amir Al-Azraki about Iraqi theatrical traditions, the birth of modern Iraqi theatre springing from church drama in Mosul in the late nineteenth century, Iraqi plays in translation, and Afro-Iraqi theatre.
Nubia has a long history of theatre, both before and after the displacement of the 1960s. In this episode, hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson highlight Nubian theatre, including the only Nubian opera, Opera El Aml by Mohy El Din Sherif. With special guest Mazen Alaa from Nubian Geographic, this episode focus on Nubian theatre in Abu Simbel and the effect that the displacement had and continues to have on theatre in Nubia and the Nubian diaspora today.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson look at MENA and SWANA puppetry traditions with guest artivist Dr. Sarah Fahmy. They talk about her production of the first recorded full play in English of Ibn Daniyal, The Shadow Spirit; the Aragoz Puppet; and, coming more into current puppetry practice by MENA folks, Fahmy's own ecofeminist puppetry practice.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson discuss Ottoman theatre, emphasizing its significance in global theatre history. They highlight the Ottoman Empire as a pivotal point of cultural exchange comparable to the Greek and Roman empires. They focus on three major forms of traditional theatre—Ortaoyunu, Karagöz, and Meddah—and dive into these forms of “plays performed in the open,” shadow theatre, and storytelling.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson talk about Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim and his “unstageable” classic play People of the Cave. They provide historical context of the play, al-Hakim’s career, and the Christian and Islamic stories that served as al-Hakim’s inspiration.
