On TAP: 068

Pannill, Leticia, and Miriam discuss Suhaila Meera's article about "Little Amal," the large scale puppet drawing attention to the plight of displaced children, the trend toward earlier curtain times for theatre, and Faye Driscoll's dance performance work, including Thank You for Coming and Come On In.

Pannill and Brian discuss Eric Mayer-Garcia's recent article, "Theorizing Performance Archives through the Critic's Labor," Alexis Soloski's novel Here in the Dark, and the 2024 musical film Mean Girls.

Pannill, Miriam, and Shayoni discuss Rustom Bharucha's recent book, The Second Wave, about cultural responses to the pandemic, speech and protest on campus regarding the war in Israel and Gaza, and the essay Decomposition Instead of Collapse - Dear Theatre, Be Like Soil.

Recorded in Providence, Rhode Island, site of ASTR 2023, Sarah, Harvey and Pannill discuss “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Commodification,” a forthcoming essay by Annie Dorsen and Sam Gill, the current moment in conservative cultural politics and what it means for theatre makers and scholars in the US, and the legacy of Matthew Perry.

Pannill and Brian welcome Sean Metzger and Laura Edmondson, outgoing and incoming editors of Theatre Journal, to discuss the 75th anniversary of the journal, and the forthcoming special issue commemorating that milestone. We discuss some of the pieces in the anniversary issue, the 1980s as a watershed era for the field, and what we hope the future will bring.

Sarah returns and we welcome Sydney Skybetter to tell us about his soon-to-be-revealed podcast, Dances with Robots (check it out at www.danceswithrobots.org), and other matters choreorobotic. We also discuss Anna Watkins Fisher's book, The Play in the System, and revisit the 2014 sci-fi film, Ex Machina.

On this episode, Pannill, Jordan, Leticia, and Miriam talk about Kevin Landis' new book, One Public, about the Oskar Eustis era at The Public Theater, financial difficulties at the Dallas Theater Center, and the recent Guggenheim Fellowships awarded to theatre and performance scholars.

Pannill and Brian welcome Shayoni Mitra to the roster of On TAP regular co-hosts! We talk about Vaibhav Saria's book, Hijras, Brothers, Lovers, the bans on drag performance in US state legislatures, and the wins for Asian-American performers at the Academy Awards.

Pannill talks to Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal and Shane Boyle of Queen Mary University of London about the strikes by academic workers in the United Kingdom.

Pannill, Miriam, and Leticia discuss Patrick Anderson and Patricia Ybarra's article, "Is this Ballroom a Bathhouse?" in the new edition of Theatre Journal, text-generating AI as a performance phenomenon, and a performance of Hamlet done in the video game Grand Theft Auto Online.