Queer Intimacies, Trans Futures, Grief, and Radical Hope in Seahorse
With Guest J.C. Pankratz
14 June 2023
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard interviews playwright J.C. Pankratz about their play Seahorse, a poetic, stream-of-consciousness one-person show about a trans man’s attempts at artificial insemination following his husband’s unexpected death. The conversation will dive into the play’s approach to the “messiness” of imagining futures you can’t yet see and its use of magical realism to invite audiences to sit inside that mess as witnesses and confidants.
Examining White Gay Responsibility in Our Theatres
8 June 2023
Munroe Shearer discusses the problem of white queer men’s positionality excusing them from anti-racism and anti-misogyny practices in theatre leadership.
Making Space for Thriving Queer Communities Through Applied Theatre
With Guest Dr. Jesse O’Rear
7 June 2023
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard talks with Dr. Jesse O’Rear about applied theatre with LGBTQ students on college campuses. Jesse describes some alternatives to traditional models of bystander intervention and diversity trainings to create embodied learning opportunities for LGBTQ students to step into positions of leadership and for audience-participants to practice “kinesthetic allyship.”
Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective
31 March 2023
Hari Somaskantha and Gitanjali exchange letters discussing their work with Teardrop Collective, a Toronto-based group that centers stories of queer, trans, Deaf, and hearing people of Tamil, Sri Lankan, and South Asian descent.
Morgan Davis and Jules Vodarek Hunter discuss the process of creating Fat Fables, a theatre program for fat LGBT2SQ+ artists who are twenty-nine and under.
Join playwright Martin Yousif Zebari and director Sivan Battat for an online conversation moderated by co–executive artistic director of Silk Road Rising Jamil Khoury about the intersections of SWANA and queer identities. This event will have live, human-written captions.
“Marimacha” Laughs its Way Through Representation of Latine, Black, and Queer Characters
13 February 2023
Daphnie Sicre discusses the way that Latinidad, Blackness, and queerness intersect in “Marimacha,” comedic coming out story about an AfroPanamanian family on their way to a wedding.
Recently named Edward Medina Prize winner Brittani Samuel joins Yura Sapi to share about her experience building her own table as a theatre critic. Topics in this episode include choosing joy every day, being a child of immigrants, and a shared meditation practice. This episode is dedicated to theare artist and critic Edward Medina, honoring his legacy which brings us all together today.
Abundance Zaddy joins Yura Sapi to talk about creating Cause Reign, an oral history project that connects Black people—with a focus on Black trans and queer folks—to their histories through dreamwork, the practice of remembering, recording, and activating the healing potential of dreams. Topics in this episode include prioritizing love and sweetness, transcending time, and asking for consent.
David Valdes explores the limitations of queer theatre historically and makes the case for a more expansive future—one that includes a wider range of characters living more complex lives, created by more queer theatremakers.
Shakespeare in Gdansk: A Vessel for Past, Present, and Future
29 September 2022
Monica Payne recaps the 26th international Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, where artists from around the globe adapted, deconstructed, and celebrated Shakespeare’s plays through boldly contemporary productions.
In this week’s episode of PUHA podcast, co-hosts Bíborka and Zsófi navigate their way through a discussion of what queerness means with performer, actress, and director Veronika Szabó; contemporary dancer Kemelo Sehlapelo; and dancer, choreographer, and clubber Gergő Dávid Farkas. Together, they contemplate identities, responsibility, and the way queer people exist in society.
Ann James talks to Adi Cabral about Cabral’s path though the intimacy industry. As a practitioner and professor, Cabral approaches intimacy choreography by centering harm prevention while working to create opportunities for students to identify and grow within their boundaries.
Erasure is Not an Option: Intimacy Advocacy Through a Transgender Lens
A Conversation with Raja Benz
30 August 2022
Ann James sits down with intimacy choreographer Raja Benz to discuss her experience implementing cultures of consent in rehearsal rooms, cultivating a localized approach to intimacy work, and centering trans perspectives in theatrical processes.
The Queering of Intimacy: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Action
A Conversation with Brooke Haney
29 August 2022
Ann James interviews Brooke Haney, creator of The Actor’s Warm Down, about closure practices in intimacy practice, when to pass work to someone else, and the need to represent queer stories through an authentically queer lens.
Minding the Gaps: Making Space for All Identities in Intimacy Work
24 August 2022
Ann James sits down with Chelsey Morgan to discuss the way their background in multiple intimacy work methodologies informs their work as a facilitator, director, writer, and intimacy specialist. Across all their work, Chelsey curates a practice that individualizes approaches to intimacy based on the needs of both the actors and the story.
Ann James introduces the Rebuilding for the Future: A Convergence of Thought Leaders in Intimacy Practice series with this call for intimacy professionals to build a foundation of equity in the industry by interrogating available mentorship and training structures. This essay begins that work by highlighting the need for a diverse pool of training ideologies and methods; and the interview-based series that follows takes up that need by highlighting the perspectives of eight practitioners who navigate the intimacy industry in a variety of ways.
This episode focuses on the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner, Fat Ham by James Ijames. Leticia and Jordan discuss the recent production at the Public Theater, its conversation and diversion from Shakespeare, representations of Black queerness, and what it means to be soft as a black person.
Redefining Our Art. Transforming Our Practices. Tending to Our People.
Thursday 16 June to Saturday 18 June 2022
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Theatre Communications Group (TCG) presented the 2022 TCG National Conference: Pittsburgh livestreaming on the commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network from Thursday 16 June to Saturday 18 June 2022.
Moving Theatre Toward Collective Self-Defense: Virginia Grise’s Your Healing is Killing Me
26 May 2022
Educator and writer Marci McMahon reflects on her experience seeing Virginia Grise’s movement manifesto Your Healing is Killing Me at Cara Mía Theatre Co.
Gender Euphoria, Episode 9: On Being a 'Trans Trailblazer'
With Scott Turner Schofield
30 March 2022
Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, consultant, educator Scott Turner Schofield. They trouble the TV/film industry's framing of Schofield as a singular "trans trailblazer," since as he notes, trans actors were, indeed, carving out spaces to make and support one another’s art long before we were invited into Hollywood or mainstream theatre spaces. The conversation dives into the shifts that Scott has noticed in audience response to his work over the course of the last twenty years and how those are in direct conversation with national politics.
Gender Euphoria, the Podcast host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with actor, writer, and comedian D’Lo to talk about his career and how he uses comedy and storytelling as tools for connection, education, and compassion.
Rezes Offers Exercises and Techniques in Performance Expansion through Gender Play, Object Study, Queer Reflections, Sense Memory, and Repetitious Failure
Friday 25 March 2022
United States
Jo Michael Rezes (they/them) presented the workshop Nonbinary Acting Methods livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network on Friday 25 March 2022 at 2 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 4 p.m. CST (Chicago, UTC -6) / 5 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5).
Gender Euphoria, Episode 7: Trans Theatre and the Autobiographical Assumption
With Dr. Jesse D. O'Rear
23 March 2022
Gender Euphoria, the podcast, host Nicolas Shannon Savard sits down with artist-scholar, Dr. Jesse O’Rear. This episode features a conversation with Dr. O’Rear about his research on and experience working with autobiographical trans narratives in performance and a phenomenon he calls the “autobiographical assumption” which audiences often read onto trans artists.