U.S. by State

Nothing stirs my blood quite like the soft knock of toe shoes on a wood floor during a piqué. And so I admit, I may have exhibited a little too much enthusiasm when Laura, four, expressed a passing interest in taking a ballet class this summer.

I had become exhausted from fighting the trafficking fights... The result has been policies that do more harm than good, and wide scale media misrepresentations of the problem. Those of us doing the actual on the ground fieldwork—talking to survivors, working with people who have experienced the harrowing challenges of exploitation—have been writing against the wave.

In About Face Youth Theatre’s rehearsal space, there is a cluster of post-it notes on the wall titled “Where I Started.” The ensemble’s first impressions range from “not being satisfied” to “ready to just do something” to “oblivion.” These notes relate to the process of AFYT’s current play, Checking Boxes.

In his essay, Josh Sobel investigates interactive theatre.

Allison Vanouse writes about Sleeping Weazel's 2014 festival of plays, trans cabaret, and solo performance coinciding with Boston Pride Week.

In this installment, Lisa Portes reflects on her experience at the TCG Conference and ponders how artistic curiosity can influence a "polycultural American theatre."

In this second installment, Olga Sanchez discusses the act of physically and metaphorically crossing borders at the 2014 TCG Conference.

In this first installment, Luis Alfaro reflects on his experience at the 2014 TCG National Conference: Crossing Borders.

Alice Stanley Jr. reviews Chris Danowski’s endofplay/7, a wild ride of gender exploration, narcissism, and longing

Dani Snyder-Young writes about Generation Sex, a devised piece from Teatro Luna looking at misogyny, violence, Latina identities, modern femininity, and more.

The TYA branch of theater for, by and with young people offers a rare intersection of authorship, representation and inverted hierarchies. When the lack of youth voices in the creation of theater for youth is accepted as normal, a power structure thrives that creates theater by, with and pleasing to adults. What happens when youth write, perform and even produce their own work, causing the usual gatekeepers to take a backseat?

Morgan Gould reviews The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, and also interacts with the idea of revealing her tastes as a critic before reviewing.

Daniel Talbott offers a reflective overview of Caffe Cino—one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway.

Patricia Davis interviews DC-based director Stevie Zimmerman, discussing casting, directing styles, and the challenges of new work.

The Welders is a new DC-based playwrights’ collective whose mission is to establish an evolving, alternative platform for play development and production. Over the course of three years, the collective will produce one play by each of the group’s five member playwrights and then give the entire organization—website, checkbook, and audience—to a new generation of artists. In a periodic series of articles, members of The Welders are going to be reporting on the collective’s experience in an attempt to share knowledge with (and learn from) the broader theatrical community.