Journal Series

Parallel Tracks 2.0 gathers diverse voices of Canadian theatre artists and producers to explore the ways in which anti-oppressive approaches are part of our creative work, in live spaces as well as digital ones. Originally commissioned by and presented in partnership with Toronto's Undercurrent Creations, conversations about care, community engagement, and consent take centre stage in this series. From navigating ethics in contracting, to intergenerational storytelling, this series reflects on ways of gathering and collaborating in online creative spaces. This series is in part supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

The intimacy industry is under pressure. While many creatives and artistic leaders see the benefits of intimacy direction and coordination as specific care and technical support for actors, the industry itself has not yet created an equitable and inclusive training process for marginalized people. In this series, Ann James, founder of Intimacy Coordinators of Color (ICOC), interviews eight queer and global majority intimacy specialists about the joys and challenges they face in the industry. What emerges from this series of interviews is a complex, multifaceted range of approaches, training models, and innovations for the future of intimacy that actively decenter whiteness, colonization, and appropriation.

There is a long history of performance entwining with environmental activism in Brazil. This series builds upon the HowlRound series and convening, Theatre in the Age of Climate Change, to highlight some of these Brazillan performances, research, and training initiatives. These works of eco-performance and ecopoetic theatre model creative paths forward for the reparative processes necessary to face climate change.

This week-long series of essays and conversations uplifts approaches to theatremaking that find confluence with the framework of the commons. Curated by Jamie Gahlon and Matthew Glassman, with members of the Arts, Culture, and Commoning working group, this week-long series amplifies artists and culture workers who activate collectivism, interdependence, and the role of imagination to catalyze systems change. These artists parse the ways their work opens up possibilities for theatre—and culture more broadly—to turn away from the market economy and toward collective liberation.

Puppetry is an ongoing negotiation between human and nonhuman. Puppets play out the way things are, but also the way things can be; and in that regard, they allow us to see our positionality and imagine worlds beyond ourselves. This series showcases myriad shapes and styles and the ways in which these puppets, whether representational or abstract, can form solidarities among humans.

The US and Canada are in the middle of an unprecedented turnover of artistic leadership in the nonprofit theatre. This series aims to put a range of voices, issues, and ideas in play that can inform and reflect this historic changeover. 

Independent Theater Hungary in partnership with HowlRound Theatre Commons presented the Roma Theatre Retrospective 2021 which included forty livestreams of twenty shows and twenty interviews from Romani artists in ten countries who were featured during four editions of the Roma Heroes International Theater Festival, Budapest. Livestreamed on the commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network Tuesday 19 October to Friday 10 December 2021.

What does it mean to be a creative producer and build networks of support as an independent theatremaker? Crafted by members of the Creative and Independent Producer Alliance (CIPA), this series delves into the expansive nature of creative producing and how CIPA came together during the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the perspectives and experiences of a diverse field of working producers, these pieces explain the unique challenges that they've faced since the onset of COVID-19, explore different processes for creative producing, and highlight CIPA members' collective vision for the future.