U.S. by State

Carol Kearns writes about Zoetrope: Part 1, a drama set in 1951 Puerto Rico, looking at its multimedia aesthetic, bilingual presentation, and political themes.

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig answers questions in about her residency at Manhattan Theatre Club through the Tow Foundation. She talks of her artistic home as collaborators, as well as her hopes for the future.

In his essay, Director Evan Caccioppoli explores the future of sex in American theatre.

What are two essential elements to creating a transformational experience for an up-and-coming playwright? 1) A full time salary and health insurance. 2) The guarantee of having a work produced by a major off-Broadway non-profit theater.

Amy Merrill writes about Sweet Dreams, Mr. Heroin and the value of presenting this piece at a substance abuse recovery center in Lewiston, Maine.

Cory Hinkle writes about Western Society from the British-German collective Gob Squad, and its multi-media, audience-involving production that investiages wish fulfillment, starting with the recreation of "one of the least watched videos on the Internet".

As a Black woman, millennial, playwright, and producer who is not Latina, I felt acutely aware of the gestures of absolute inclusivity, both small and large, that comprised my Encuentro experience.

Our process is open-source, inquiry-based and ever-evolving. We love hyphens. We flirt at the intersection of playmaking and script writing. We believe that theater requires the whole performer—mind, body, and voice. Often we draw strong, immediate connections that open up a dialogue between past and present, and play on themes of history, science, mathematics, and social justice.

Beau Jest in Boston is thirty years old. Over that time we have seen several transformations, but the impulse that brought us together has never changed. We are actor-driven. We only do projects we are personally invested in pursuing as a group. We like work that is physically inventive and imaginatively staged. We like to take our time developing a piece, and will spend anywhere from two months to two years on it. We use Beau Jest as a laboratory to explore new ways of combining gesture, text, and physicality.

Vickie Vértiz writes about Teatro Luna's production of Your Problem with Men

We’ve found most artists we come in contact with in Detroit aren’t bound to a single discipline—printmakers curate community food-based events, and trained painters build large-scale public installations. This inherent openness to working cross-disciplinarily has helped us to expand our ideas about the work of our company and the nature of our ensemble.

This long standing collaboration can be felt through and through the ensemble work on display. Premeditation is tantalizing with promise—a talented cast and inventive staging in a noir 1940’s-esque comedy about marriage, infidelity, and murder.

Jonathan Mandell takes a look at Broadway revivals about the theatre, contrasting them with a production of Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Shakespearean Actor Samuel Taylor shares his insight on how to make Shakespeare theatre more attractive to a contemporary and millennial audience.

Sydney Chatman is the creator and director of The Tofu Chitlin’ Circuit, a community and youth ensemble training collective based in Chicago’s South Side. Before creating TCC, Chatman worked on productions from Chicago to Broadway, while also teaching at the University of Chicago Charter School. When students she once taught as kindergarteners came to her as teens and said, “Can you train and teach me?” she said, “Yes.”