By David Roberts
Theatre Reviews Limited
Arts journalist and editor Mark Blankenship is pleased to announce the debut of The Flashpaper: Theatre’s Thoughts on Right Now, a new journal dedicated to the urgent ideas of contemporary theater artists. Each issue of this print-only publication features original content created in response to a timely prompt from a diverse group of artists working in a variety of forms. Contributions can take shape in any printable form including playscripts, comics, essays, photo diaries, and more. Utilizing the speed of on-demand printing and an innovative approach to editing, each issue of The Flashpaper can be conceived, written, and produced within six weeks. The first issue of The Flashpaper is currently on sale at theflashpaper.com.
What Will It Be Like When Social Distancing Ends? is the prompt for the debut issue. It includes contributions by Raquel Almazan, Clare Barron, Sarah Einspanier, Kelley Nicole Girod, Ayun Halliday, Kinesis Project dance theatre, The Living Theatre, Tara Moses, National Asian American Theatre Company, Parallel Exit, Meropi Peponides, and Theater Breaking Through Barriers, along with a foreword by David Henry Hwang and an afterword by Sarah Treem.
“The debut issue of The Flashpaper: Theatre’s Thoughts on Right Now is a physical testament to what over two dozen artists think it will be like when social distancing ends,” says Mark Blankenship, editor and founder of The Flashpaper. “They’ve imagined the future via manifestos and plays, parodies and poems, photo essays and comic books. They’ve laid themselves bare with a clarity that only comes from being in the thick of it. In a few weeks or a few years, when we need to remember what this time was like and what we hoped it would produce, we can dog-ear their pages.”
“The Flashpaper: Theatre’s Thoughts on Right Now gathers together a new and vital community,” says Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. “On these pages, we will share our lives and work during this pandemic, our discoveries in isolation, and our innovations as we emerge to rebuild the theater. In doing so, we may even rediscover our roots.”
The Flashpaper is dedicated to financial transparency. The debut issue costs $27.50 and for each copy sold, $1 goes to each of the 12 contributing entities; $1 goes to both journal staffers; and $2.50 goes to the Indie Theater Fund. The remaining $7 covers printing costs and other expenses.
The debut issue of The Flashpaper: Theatre’s Thoughts on Right Now includes the following contributions, listed in print order:
Putting the Community Back into Theatre by David Henry Hwang
An essay that challenges our expectation of what “community theatre” means.
Manifesto From Quarantine (v 1.0) for the Theatre of the Future by Meropi Peponides
An incisive and poetic manifesto that gives marching orders to the artists, producers, and audience members who will need to rebuild the theatre in the wake of the pandemic.
Andrew Cuomo’s Nipple Rings: An Oral History by Ayun Halliday
A hand-drawn comic about a theatre troupe of talking animal that finds an ingenious solution for escaping bad reviews in the time after the plague.
About Alice, or When Social Distancing Ends by Kelley Nicole Girod
An autobiographical essay about surprising intersections of race, love, politics, and family during the pandemic.
What Was (To Have Been), What Is, What Will Be by Mia Katigbak
A poignant essay in which the artistic director of the National Asian American Theatre Company asks company members of a canceled production to help her imagine the future.
What This Will Be Like When It’s Over by Clare Barron
A new play about the uncomfortable transition from sexting to physical intimacy.
Framing Forward by members of Kinesis Project dance theatre
Six photo essays about life after social distancing, created under the constraints of social distancing.
Let’s Fuse Theatre, Medicine, and Community Engagement by Brad Burgess, Jenna Coalson, and Rob Mowring
A lively Q&A with the artistic director of the Living Theatre, an epidemiologist, and a community organizer about how their three fields can create a meaningful responses to the pandemic.
Making a Scene (with Cornell Whitlow) by Joel Jeske and Mark Lonergan of Parallel Exit
A satirical critics notebook reviewing immersive theatre productions created in the aftermath of social distancing.
#18 by Sarah Einspanier
A new play about two Trader Joe’s employees navigating the rules of love, sex, and check-out lines.
Leveled by Nicholas Viselli of Theater Breaking Through Barriers
An essay about how the pandemic has essentially made all of disabled, and how we can look to the disabled community on where to go from here.
I Imagine a Just Theatre by Tara Moses
An epic blueprint of a more just theatre that can be built after the pandemic, drawing on the author’s own experience as a Native artist and audience member.
The Theatre Of… by Raquel Almazan
A new poem-play about the many voices of theatre people struggling to agree on what will happen next.
Theatre Is the Form by Sarah Treem
An essay about why theatre will outlast anything we see on a screen.
About the Contributors
Raquel Almazan is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator and activist. Her eclectic career spans original multi-media solo performances, playwriting, devising, and dramaturgy. Almazan’s work has been presented/developed at Classical Theatre of Harlem-Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Signature Theatre, Next Door-New York Theatre Workshop, Bric Arts, The Playwrights Center, New Georges, Pregones-PRTT, Repertorio Espanol, La Micro, INTAR, Hi-Arts, Pangea World Theatre, La Mama and Bushwick Starr. Almazan is the Artistic Director of La Lucha Arts, collaborating with organizations, social movements, and the impacted.
Clare Barron is a two-time Obie Award-winning playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist from Wenatchee, WA. Her plays include Dance Nation, You Got Older, and I’ll Never Love Again.
Sarah Einspanier Sarah’s plays include Lunch Bunch (upcoming PlayCo and Clubbed Thumb; Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks; New York Times and Time Out Critics’ Picks), House Plant (New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door; “highbrow / brilliant” in New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix), I LOVE SEAN (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow), The Convent of Pleasure (Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project), and MADONNA col BAMBINO created with composer Deepali Gupta and director Caitlin Sullivan (the New Ohio’s Ice Factory, curated by New Georges). Her work has also been supported by Ars Nova’s Play Group, the Millay Colony, Cape Cod Theatre Project, and the National Theater Institute.
Kelley Nicole Girod is founder and Executive Director of OBIE Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival. She has produced all over NYC and is an inductee in the Indie Theatre Hall of Fame. As a playwright, she writes about her rich upbringing in Louisiana. She received a Launch New Play Commission from The Atlantic Theater in 2019 and is currently a Playwriting Fellow at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture.
Ayun Halliday is a performer, playwright, and author of seven books, including No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late. As a member of the Neo-Futurists from 1989-1998, she wrote, directed, and performed in over 500 short plays and several full-length solo performances. Longer works include The Mermaid’s Legs, Fawnbook, Zamboni Godot, and NURSE. Ayun co-founded Theater of the Apes with her husband Greg Kotis, and she hosts its monthly book-based variety show Necromancers of the Public Domain. ayunhalliday.com
David Henry Hwang David’s works include the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Chinglish, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, and the Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney’s Tarzan. His latest show, Soft Power, written with Jeanine Tesori, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. He is also America’s most-produced living opera librettist. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
Kinesis Project dance theatre is a large-scale, outdoor, public dance company. A 501(c)3 organization that creates outdoor dance concerts, facilitates educational programs and invents performances with diverse communities. A company at the forefront of the international discussion of placemaking, art engagement and the cultural imperative of art in public space, Kinesis Project dance theatre invents large scale, space-changing, breath-taking experiences in NYC, Seattle and soon many other places.
Founded in 1947 as an imaginative alternative to the commercial theater by Judith Malina, the German-born student of Erwin Piscator, and Julian Beck, an abstract expressionist painter of the New York School, The Living Theatre has staged nearly a hundred productions performed in eight languages in 28 countries on five continents – a unique body of work that has influenced theater the world over.
Tara Moses is an award-winning playwright, director, Artistic Director of telatúlsa, and citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. She holds a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Tulsa and will attend Brown University/Trinity Rep as an M.F.A. candidate in Directing in 2021. www.taramoses.com
National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) is an award-winning NYC-based theatre company that was founded in 1989 to assert the presence, significance, and vibrancy of Asian American theatre in the United States, demonstrating its vital contributions to the fabric of American culture. NAATCO produces under four programs: 1) European and American classics presented with all-Asian American casts; 2) adaptations of these classics by Asian American playwrights; 3) new plays – preferably world premieres – written by non-Asian Americans, not for or about Asian Americans, but realized by all-Asian American casts; 4) new plays by Asian American writers that incorporate other performative arts or media.
Parallel Exit engages in extensive artistic programming, artist capacity building, and youth education initiatives, throughout New York City’s five boroughs, across the United States, and in countries around the world. Productions have received both local and international praise for their inventiveness, energy, and originality, with presentations at such esteemed venues as at The New Victory Theater, The Lincoln Center Institute, 59E59 Theaters, The Duke on 42nd Street, and Symphony Space in New York; the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the UK (winning a Spirit of the Fringe Award); and festivals in Poland, Spain, Austria, and Japan.
Meropi Peponides is a theatre maker, artistic producer, dramaturg, podcast producer, and co-founder of Radical Evolution. Current projects with Radical Evolution include Songs About Trains and The Corrido of the San Patricios. She is also one of three Directors of Soho Rep, where she leads artistic development and produces the mainstage season. Her work explores cross-cultural affinity and the experience of multiethnic identity in the 21st Century. BA, UCLA. MFA Columbia University (Dean’s Fellow). Proud member of Artists Co-Creating Real Equity (ACRE). @radevolution
Theater Breaking Through Barriers is the only professional Off-Broadway theater organization dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities and altering the misperceptions surrounding disability by proving, once and for all, that disability does not affect the quality or integrity of our art or artists.
Sarah Treem is the co-creator and showrunner of the Golden Globe-winning Showtime drama The Affair. Previously, she wrote and produced House of Cards, HBO’s In Treatment, and How to Make It in America. She’s been nominated for the Humanitas Prize, Emmy Award, and Writers Guild Awards, and won twice from the WGA. Her plays, including When We Were Young and Unafraid, A Feminine Ending, The How and the Why, and Mirror Mirror, have been produced multiple times over and published by Samuel French and the Dramatists Play Service. She holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A from the Yale School of Drama. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her two children.