Commons-Based Approaches

Beginning in January, HowlRound Theatre Commons will operate independently and with new leadership, as co-founder and director Jamie Gahlon steps into an advisory role and Ramona Rose King and Julia Schachnik assume the positions of co-directors.

In its second and final year, the Artistic Caucus aimed to integrate its collaborative model into the workflows and budgets of four theatres while providing freelance artists with access and compensation. Lauren Halvorsen details the program’s strategies, impact, and significance for a field in need of transformation.

Maridee Slater invites theatremakers to think beyond graduate school credentials and gatekeepers to preserve the embodied practices that allow us to see each other and collaborate across difference. Let’s circle up.

Since her arrival at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, Jayme Kilburn has grown its theatre program into a valued local cultural institution. By positioning theatre as a social service, she writes, she has cultivated a community that wants to show up.

From a four-mile-long human chain to a torchlight ceremony in the rain—the playful, passionate demonstrations and symbols that arose from Hungary's Freeszfe movement inspired artists globally. Todd London and László Upor discuss the movement’s many examples of how artists can use their talents to stand up to tyranny.

Junior Programs, Inc brought the values of democracy and racial and ethnic diversity to children across the United States through an innovative, decentralized model that featured comprehensive educational partnerships. Joan Lancourt offers their approach as a potential inspiration for the contemporary moment.

Online theatre spaces can promote accessibility, democratic processes, international connections, and ecological benefits, but many digital platforms act as intermediaries that disrupt storytelling for their own profit. L. Nicol Cabe considers this paradox and offers potential paths forward.

Fifty Boxes of Earth at Theater Mu was a maximalist play that combined Western and South Asian theatrical styles, choreography, and puppetry. Lianna Matt McLernon and playwright Ankita Raturi talk about the show’s collective approach and how it was created to be reproduced for any specific community.

Drawing from their experiences creating the Arts for EveryBody campaign, Christina D. Eskridge and Michael Rohd explore the concept of co-design in artistic, civic, and community contexts. Their experience with the initiative models ways for artist-led practice to build trust and guide processes within community development efforts.

Pluralism is inherent in community partnerships, whether hyperlocal or national. As the One Nation/One Project team built public arts partnerships in eighteen sites across the country, they sought pluralistic strategies to respond to a question of growing importance: What future is possible at the intersection of our increasing diversity and diminishing cohesion? And how do we reach it?

Shared leadership is not revolutionary, and it is more than a trend. In this essay, Devon Berkshire and Miranda Gonzalez kick off their series The Evolution of Shared Leadership by exploring the generations of shared leadership practice—especially in theatres of color—and the contemporary push toward more collective leadership.