This section collects all HowlRound content that takes the form of an interview between two or more theatremakers. Interested in contributing your own interview? Here are our interview guidelines and best practices!
Austin’s pop princess, p1nkstar, shares the story of her evolution from performance artist creating a pop star persona for Instagram to real life pop star to community leader creating spaces for fellow trans artists to showcase their work in Texas. This episode also features guest co-host Melissa Lin Sturges, coordinator of the annual Doric Wilson Panel for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) LGBTQ+ Focus Group.
For Working Actors Teaching Their Craft in College, Those Who Can Do, Teach
14 August 2023
What does it mean to teach acting at the college level? Gregory Jones and Adrianne Krstansky discuss the changing environment of university acting training, from students’ desires for purposeful and justice-oriented education to university expectations of market-driven “deliverables” from classes in the arts.
Making Space for Self-Authorship through Audio Description
With Guests H. May and Liz Thomson
26 July 2023
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard, Dr. H. May, and Dr. Liz Thomson discuss the creative and collaborative possibilities that emerge when audio description (AD) is made an integral part of the artistic process, as opposed to solely an accommodation for individual audience members. They critique traditional models of AD that demand objectivity and propose alternative approaches that embrace self-determination, specificity of lived experience, and universal design.
Making Space: Consent, Collaboration, and Queer Access Intimacy
With Guests J.C. Pankratz and Emmett Podgorski
12 July 2023
J.C. Pankratz returns to the podcast to reflect on the first full production of their play Seahorse, directed by Nicolas Shannon Savard, starring Emmett Podgorski. Nicolas, J.C., and Emmett discuss how the collaborative process, from auditions through closing night, was informed by queer community building, access intimacy, and consent-based practice. They offer behind-the-scenes perspectives and concrete examples of how tools and ideas discussed in previous episodes played out in practice.
Playwrights Carlyle Brown, Elaine Romero, and Catherine Filloux come together to discuss their experiences as working theatre artists who also act as caregivers to their spouses.
Queer-Trans Intimacy: One Foot in the Academy and the Other in the Nightclub
With Guests Raja Benz and Joy Brooke Fairfield
5 July 2023
Nicolas Shannon asks Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz how their intimacy work is informed by queer theory and critical theory. Their conversation bounces between queer of color theory, decolonial theory, disability theory, and the dim glow of the night club; between past, present, and future; between the ideas they’re sure of and the ones they’re working out in real time. Bonus! It comes with dozens of recommended readings.
Host Nicolas Shannon Savard and playwright Leanna Keyes discuss her play Doctor Voynich and Her Children. What does it mean to stage trans stories about queer motherhood, abortion, intimacy, choice, and power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the ongoing legislative attacks on reproductive rights and the trans community?
With Guests Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz
21 June 2023
In the first part of a two-part conversation on queer-trans intimacy direction and choreography, Nicolas talks with Theatrical Intimacy Education faculty members Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz about their courses Working with Trans & Non-Binary Artists and Staging Intimacy Beyond the Binary. They discuss crafting courses that are less Trans-101 and more cracking gender open, resisting patriarchal and colonialist scripts, and bringing queer culture into the rehearsal room.
Tony Garcia and Claudia de Vasco share their experiences becoming immersed in the Chicano movement, which has informed both of their careers in artistic leadership.
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.
Vamos a inventarnos algo / Let's Make Something New
13 June 2023
Theatremaker Eric Swartz sits down with Rosalba Rolón, co-founder and artistic director of Pregones/PRTT, to discuss ensemble-based theatre, mentorship across generations, and their work to sembrar una semilla—to plant a seed and work to make it grow.
Richard Falcon and Fran Astorga discuss the need for inclusive spaces that led to founding their own companies, the road blocks they've pushed against, and the legacy they hope to create as part of the teatro field.
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.”
Holly L. Derr talks with Larissa FastHorse about Indigeneity and misogyny in The Thanksgiving Play, using satire to create change, and rewriting Peter Pan.
Opening the National Theatre’s Doors to Devised Work
31 May 2023
Stewart Pringle, senior dramaturg at the National Theatre, sheds light on the theatre’s Generate program. Jeffrey Mosser and Stewart discuss the problem with the term “literary department,” when to take a risk, and why it’s important that the big fish in the big pond makes the investment in smaller-scale ensemble-based companies.
Artistic director of Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed, Alexander Devriendt talks through their process for imagining and developing participatory content. Alexander and Jeffrey Mosser also dig into financing art in Europe, the cost of touring internationally and how COVID has affected it, and sustaining family and art simultaneously.
Culture worker and theatre practitioner Dr. Cristal Chanelle Truscott provides a primer on her SoulWork process, applies it to her present processes, and expands our horizons as artists.
Creating Trust Through Money: A Conversation on the Common Wallet Project
11 May 2023
Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli talk about the Common Wallet, an initiative in which everyone involved commits to living out of the same bank account. Together, the group aims to develop more radical forms of solidarity, kinship, and trust, as well as a thorough questioning of and experimenting with different possible relationships to money.
Creatives and book authors Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman dig into their new book based on their piece City Council Meeting, an exciting performance, rooted in a commonplace bureaucratic event, that develops dynamic participatory relationships with audiences and local government.
Star Finch and Ellen Sebastian Chang, friends and artistic collaborators in the Bay Area, have a conversation about their local theatre scene’s recent but long overdue racial reckoning, scraping together a creative life, the institutionalization of artists, and more.
Jacqueline Flores and Abel López, co-curators of the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront series, discuss their careers, their sense of cultural identity as Latinx theatremakers, and importance of intergenerational dialogue.
Olga Sanchez Saltveit and Shayna Schlosberg continue their conversation for the Latinx Leaders at the Forefront series, focusing on mentorship, trade-offs they have made, and their shared experiences working in service of equity.
Olga Sanchez Saltveit and Shayna Schlosberg sit down to discuss their careers making theatre and advancing equity for the Latinx community in the Pacific Northwest.
Playwright and director Karen Malpede joins Jeffrey Mosser to talk about her career and connections from the Open Theater to Theater Three Collaborative, as well as her partner George Bartenieff, an actor and champion for the avant-garde.
Reflecting the United States Latinx Experience on Stage
2 May 2023
Nidia Medina, associate artistic director of INTAR Theatre, interviews José Luis Valenzuela, artistic director of the Latino Theater Company, about his path into artistic direction, his mentors, and the legacy he has cultivated.
