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Aesthetics

In this section, dive into conversations focused on beauty, taste, and the artistic choices made while creating performance. Check out Brendan McCall’s Beyond Ibsen series, which features contemporary Norwegian theatremakers, and Jonathan Mandell’s essay “Pandemic Theatre Aesthetic,” which discusses the immediate artistic responses of theatremakers in the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

The Latest

The Amateur Botanist Talks Merrily Into the Night: Some Notes on Neurodivergent Performance (and How to Make It)
Essay
The Amateur Botanist Talks Merrily Into the Night: Some Notes on Neurodivergent Performance (and How to Make It)
by Rob Onorato
12 December 2023
Digging for Bones with Topdog/Underdog
Podcast
Digging for Bones with Topdog/Underdog
by Leticia Ridley, Jordan Ealey
15 November 2023
Scattered, but Not Apart: A Two-Sided Story
Essay
Scattered, but Not Apart: A Two-Sided Story
by Carl(os) Roa, Rula(s) A. Muñoz
26 October 2023
Not Just a Chair
Essay

Not Just a Chair

Considering Design Choices

18 February 2017

Professor James Ogden explores what it means to put a chair on stage, considering how design informs character choices.

Philoctetes in Jerusalem
Essay

Philoctetes in Jerusalem

The Cost of Growing Up a Soldier

31 January 2017

Abraham Benson-Goldberg discusses Khan Theatre’s production of Philoctetes, examining the intersections of young soldiers, heroism, war, and politics.

Absurdist Theatre and Resistance
Essay

Absurdist Theatre and Resistance

27 January 2017

Edward Einhorn discusses the relevance of absurdist theatre.

The “Next Wave” of Theatre? Reflections on Avant-Garde Adaptations
Essay

The “Next Wave” of Theatre? Reflections on Avant-Garde Adaptations

22 January 2017

Derek McCormack reports on the ongoing trend in productions that are avant-garde reimaginings of old texts in particular at BAM’s New Wave Festival.

Elements of Oz
Essay

Elements of Oz

Pay Attention to the Men Behind the Curtain

17 January 2017

Amelia Parenteau deconstructs the use of technology in The Builders Association’s production of Elements of Oz, an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, presented at 3LD in New York City.

Location-Based and Audience-Aware Storytelling
Essay

Location-Based and Audience-Aware Storytelling

Grace Plains and Bodies for a Global Brain

8 January 2017

The process of creating two works, as part of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s participation in Google's Glass Creative Collective, that use audience's and actors' locations, identities, and choices as pivotal elements of their storytelling structures and investigating the simultaneous processes of dramatic writing/devising and writing code.

Open Your Mind
Essay

Open Your Mind

Theatre Space, Performance, and Audience

6 January 2017

verity healey considers the Battersea Arts Centre’s new Courtyard theatre space and inviting an audience to participate in the performance through interaction with the performance space.

Rooms of Desire
Essay

Rooms of Desire

Checking In at Kuro Tanino's Avidya: No Lights Inn

3 January 2017

Zach Dorn explores Kuro Tanino’s mythical Avidya: No Lights Inn, a ritualistic and darkly spiritual experience at the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival in Japan.

Kitchen Theatre
Essay

Kitchen Theatre

Space for Grief, Community, and Activism

20 December 2016

Rachel E. Diken on Aglio e Olio, a “kitchen theatre” piece written and performed by Meg Persichetti and produced and directed by Laura Gilkey in Maplewood, New Jersey.

One Queen’s Highly Personal/Subjective Reaction to Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
Essay

One Queen’s Highly Personal/Subjective Reaction to Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music

15 December 2016

Rob Oronato on Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, a “communal, intelligent, erotic, participatory, spectacular performance art concert; a marathon survey dedicated to destroying through exposure the racism, patriarchy, supremacy, and fascism suppressing the fabulosity of all our country’s different beleaguered Others over the years.”

My Brother’s A Keeper
Essay

My Brother’s A Keeper

Storytelling With Funk Aesthetics

6 December 2016

A new play takes cues from funk music to explore bisexuality, biphobia, and polyamory in 1990s Brooklyn.

What Aristotle Knew about Cars, Thermodynamics, and Drama but Didn’t Tell You
Essay

What Aristotle Knew about Cars, Thermodynamics, and Drama but Didn’t Tell You

3 December 2016

Robert Ruffin considers how Aristotelian construction can be viewed through the lens of the laws of thermodynamic exchange, or the marriage of physics and dramaturgy.

Radical Theatre in Poland
Essay

Radical Theatre in Poland

27 November 2016

Brian Hashimoto travels to Poland and reports on the 2016 Malta Festival.

Design Meeting
Essay

Design Meeting

My Old Man (and Other Stories)

26 November 2016

Jess Barbagallo and Chris Giarmo discuss design questions for Jess’s play My Old Man (and Other Stories) and the recently increased interest in trans artists.

A Sound Designer on The (Remarkable) Encounter
Essay

A Sound Designer on The (Remarkable) Encounter

22 November 2016

Sound designer Victoria Deiorio reflects on her experience of Complicite’s The Encounter and its ingenious use of sound. 

Beyond Liveness
Essay

Beyond Liveness

The Dramaturgies of Augmented Reality in Live Theatre

12 November 2016

Anchuli Felicia King discusses augmented reality technologies, one of the most radical technological advances affecting the theatre today and the unique dramaturgies and opportunities provided by AR in theatre.

Theatrical Reinvention
Essay

Theatrical Reinvention

A Conversation with John Doyle

10 November 2016

Donald Sanborn talks with director John Doyle about the differences between musical theatre and opera, and the power of seeing actors play instruments on stage.

Guns Onstage are a Model for Guns Offstage
Essay

Guns Onstage are a Model for Guns Offstage

7 November 2016

Charlotte Canning discusses gun violence in theatre, and film, taking a close look at safety policies and regulations for firearms on set.

Six Hundred and Ninety-Two Million
Essay

Six Hundred and Ninety-Two Million

On Art, Ethics, and Activism

22 October 2016

Theatre practitioner Caridad Svich on art and activism and After Orlando.

On the Need for a Technological Theatre
Essay

On the Need for a Technological Theatre

17 October 2016

Zachary Small calls for theatre to move beyond the living room play and explore the technological realm.

Lecture by Bojana Kunst, Author of Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism
Video

Lecture by Bojana Kunst, Author of Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism

Monday 10 October 2016
Lublin, Poland

The 21st edition of Konfrontacje Festival in Lublin, Poland presented a lecture by Bojana Kunst, author of Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Monday 10 October at 15:00 CEST (Lublin/Berlin) / 16:00 EEST (Bucharest) / 2 p.m. BST (London) / 13:00 UTC / 9 a.m. EDT (New York). Follow @HowlRoundTV and @konfrontacje on Twitter for updates.

First-Person Radio
Essay

First-Person Radio

Miniature Interviews with Three Audio Storytellers

2 October 2016

Emma Wiseman presents musings on audio storytelling and the world of radio from Cecil Baldwin, Jon Earle, and Audrey Quinn, three New York-based audiophiles.

Staging Local, Staying Small
Essay

Staging Local, Staying Small

25 September 2016

Kyna Hamill and Brianna Randolph discuss crafting Letters to Medford, a theatre performance by Two Roads Performance Projects in Massachusetts. 

A Hope I Can Live With
Essay

A Hope I Can Live With

20 September 2016

Director Emily Mendelsohn shares her experience at the 2016 Theatre Without Borders Conference, and muses on an “ecological way of seeing” for her work.

Toward a Sensory Theatre / Hacia un Teatro Sensorial
Essay

Toward a Sensory Theatre / Hacia un Teatro Sensorial

10 September 2016

Beatriz Afonso Santos describes her process of exploring theatre and theatremaking techniques that involve all the senses. Read it in English and in Spanish!