#6 – Thumbs or Tomatoes- Theater Criticism in the 21st Century
In our final episode of the season playwright Leah Nanako Winkler tells Christine about a 3Views, a new initiative to invite more voices into theater criticism.
#5 – It’s the Most Traditional Thing You Can Do – On Diverse and Inclusive Casting
In this flashback to summer episode of TALKBACK, host Christine Toy Johnson welcomes playwright Kristoffer Diaz to talk about his work on the musical Hercules at the Public Theater just before it premiered in New York City and addresses presentation through the lens of wrestling in The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.
#4 – The Numbers Don’t Really Lie – On Why We Count, and Why it Matters
This week, host Christine Toy Johnson leads TALKBACK on a journey to understand why representation, or the lack of it, has real and lasting impact on actors and audiences alike. Mandy Gonzalez shares her personal journey from seeking herself in others onstage to becoming a role model for others. Pun Bandhu, Porsche McGovern, and Todd London discuss the variety of studies tracking inclusion in theater workplaces, the grim truth of the current math, and how seeing these studies is slowly changing minds and rosters.
#3 – If We Don’t Ask, They Don’t Give – On Collaborating with a Marketing Department
No marketing means no audience… but how *do* you talk to the Marketing Department? Christine Toy Johnson sits down with actor/playwright Charlayne Woodard, playwright Lydia Diamond, producer Garlia Cornelia Jones, and marketing director Caitlin Baird for a lively discussion on how artists can get the marketing support their plays need to thrive, and chat about practical strategies for turning conflict into collaboration.
#2 – You Have to Be Willing to do the Work-Writing Outside Your Lived Experience
In our second episode The Dramatist Presents: TALKBACK Host, Christine Toy Johnson sits down with novelist and playwright Kia Corthron (The Castle Cross The Magnet Carter, A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick) to talk about what it was like to write Tap The Leopard, a play in three acts that tells of the historical African-American colonization of Liberia. A story that was far outside her lived own lived experience, but hit home with audience members.
#1 – It’s Not My Story It’s Yours: Appropriation vs. Appreciation
In its inaugural episode, The Dramatist Presents: TALKBACK looks at the line between appreciating a culture and wanting to explore it in art and appropriating a culture for art and profit. At the top, host Christine Toy Johnson (The New Deal, The Wisdom of Trees) sits down with Sicangu Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse to talk about her Thanksgiving Play, as well as her approach to playwriting as activism.