Out All Day: New Orleans • 30th August 2023

A review of the Irish Channel Bar Crawl

Strolling up to Parasol’s on an auspiciously autumn-like August evening, I’ll admit I was already inclined to enjoy the Irish Channel Pub Crawl hosted by New Orleans Crawling. I’ve been on my fair share of New Orleans history tours over the years, and this boozy spin on the classic French Quarter walkabout promised to enthrall our group with stories of battles, music, and pirates.

Medium • 24th July 2023

Looking for Absence

The story goes, in my family, I’m a bad driver. This narrative is not unfounded — as a teenager, learning to drive, I had a series of slips-ups in a short number of years. Rear-ending our high school’s Chinese teacher when I skidded on black ice pulling up to a stop sign. Clipping a startled deer’s hoof in the dim-dark of the early morning, on my way to school. Sliding off our driveway into a snowy ditch, requiring the whole family’s help to push the car back out.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 24th July 2023

On Producing an International Tour During a Global Pandemic

I met Eva Doumbia in New Orleans, Louisiana in March 2019 (as documented in my essay “New to New Orleans”), and over a glass of wine, she shared plans for her upcoming creation, , which would tell the story of various foods’ interconnected histories of dominance and oppression spanning back to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

Out All Day: New Orleans • 20th June 2023

VANYA and SONIA and MASHA and SPIKE by Christopher Durang

Rounding out its first season, new-to-the-scene Crescent City Stage presents Vanya & Sonia & Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang, a belly-laugh comedy that centers on the narcissistic despair of its three titular siblings: Vanya (Doug Spearman), Sonia (Jana Mestecky), and Masha (Lorene Chesley).

Out All Day: New Orleans • 14th June 2023

OCEAN FILIBUSTER @ THE CAC

Originally commissioned in 2016 by the American Repertory Theater in partnership with the Harvard University Center for the Environment, Ocean Filibuster attempts the impossible: letting the vast, unknowable Ocean speak for itself.

Out All Day: New Orleans • 14th June 2023

REVIEW: TWELFTH NIGHT @ TULANE

While the word play and “sword” play and poor Malvolio in his yellow stockings, cross-gartered, still hold their charm some 420 years after was written, Viola’s cross-dressing for survival made me yearn for an unabashedly queer telling of this story.

Out All Day: New Orleans • 30th May 2023

Review of A Midsummer Nights Dream by The NOLA Project

The NOLA Project’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Brittany N. Williams, is a romp, and this tight 2-hour production flies in the face of anyone who alleges The Bard’s works are boring.

Eater New Orleans • 10th May 2023

Sam Caruso Is Forging a New Path With French-Style Custard in New Orleans

Salvatore “Sam” Caruso started making ice cream at home in 2018 with a two-quart Cuisinart machine, but he could never get the texture right. Despite his best efforts, it was always too icy, not smooth enough for his taste. Then, as the world shut down in March 2020, Caruso found himself with ample free time after being let go from his job. He used a serendipitous tax return check to buy a higher-quality ice cream machine for $1,300 and started experimenting.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 27th April 2023

Black Southern Playwrights Take Center Stage

The interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic gave way to a time of reckoning for theatre and theatremakers. As we collectively emerge from the pandemic’s crucible, let me present a beacon of hope for what theatre in the United States can be, at its best: “adaptable, emergent, sustainable, and well.” I am quoting Lauren E. Turner (she/her), the founder and producing artistic director of New Orleans-based theatre company No Dream Deferred and the We Will Dream: New Works Festival.

BOMB Magazine • 21st February 2023

Eva Doumbia and Chef Alexandre Bella Ola Interviewed

I first met Eva Doumbia while she was on a research trip to New Orleans. I was enthralled by her explanation of the show she was creating which used elements of documentary theater and religious ceremony to address food history, its connections to the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. I was honored when she asked me to translate the show from French into English and produce its United States tour.

Medium • 28th September 2022

A Goat Song for the American Theater

Deliriously jet-lagged, standing at the lip of the Theater of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis hill in Athens, I learned the etymology of the word “tragedy.” To the delight of word nerds everywhere, “tragedy” roughly translates to “goat song.”

Medium • 8th August 2022

The Presumption of Belonging

I've moved a lot. Not for any of the usual reasons, like the military, or my parents getting divorced, or even specifically for work. My parents are still together, still living in the house I grew up in—well, technically the house I did most of my growing up in, from ages 8 through 18.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 13th June 2022

From Awareness to Action: Facilitating Change in the American Theatre

Amelia: We’ve seen radical transformation! That keeps me going. To break it down for people who might not be familiar with our terminology, we are doing anti-racist work, which is assuming a context of white body supremacy culture, yet it’s not just about race. The collective liberation we are steering organizations towards is not about “diversity and inclusion” and filling a quota of how many global majority people you’ve hired at your organization.

AMERICAN THEATRE • 10th March 2022

The Shows That Got Away and/or Found a Way

One of the most important jobs of theatre journalism—some would say its central, even only, job—is to bear witness to and commemorate a fundamentally ephemeral medium in words and pictures. That’s plenty true in normal times, but this documentary mission has become especially urgent in a time of deep uncertainty and constant reshuffling due to an airborne virus, which has disproportionally encroached on art forms and social practices that rely on appointment gathering and shared (indoor) space.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 8th March 2022

Clowning for a Cause: Healthcare Clowns Offer Opportunities for Holistic Healing

Although the mark of countless successful theatrical performers is their passion, it takes a special combination of versatility and compassion to transition theatre skills into a healthcare setting. Tiffany Riley does precisely this work as a healthcare clown and a founder of the Laughter League and North American Federation of Healthcare Clown Organizations (NAFHCO).

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 5th January 2021

Seuls en Scène Festival 2020 / Festival Seuls en Scène 2020

Masse wasn’t interested in simply asking artists for video recordings of the works he had intended to present this year and instead came up with a programmatic mix of video recordings of live performance, “staged” readings, one making-of documentary, and a series of docutheatre works.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 24th November 2020

Hold on Tightly, Let Go Lightly

Pursuing a life in theatre or medicine requires such dedication that it can be hard to imagine a career transition, and yet, as this year has viscerally reminded us, the only constant in life is change. Although the path between theatre and medicine may not be evident at first glance, the specific skill set that both professions require makes the transition more seamless than one might imagine.

AMERICAN THEATRE • 18th February 2020

Into the Woods

The turning point was Katrina, as is so often the case when you’re asking questions in New Orleans, trying to get to the heart of the matter. A Studio in the Woods is located on a plot of land purchased by Lucianne and Joe Carmichael in 1969, comprising 7.66 acres of endangered forest in the Louisiana wetlands.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 13th January 2020

"French and yet never French enough" / « Français, mais jamais assez français »

Any translator worth their salt can tell you the real work of translation is not the literal (painstaking!) rendering of one language into another, but instead the necessary accompanying cultural translation that carries the meaning of the work.

HowlRound Theatre Commons • 18th November 2019

The American Theatre Was Killing Me

For those unfamiliar with the term “racialized trauma,” counselor Ayanna Molina of True Love Movement explains: “Trauma is hurtful, emotionally damaging situations that you cannot control. [With my clients], the racialized component is that [they] happen specifically because you are Black.”

IRT Theater • 1st October 2021

Tussaud/Antoinette | IRT Theater

A story of two Maries. One ruled wax, one ruled France. One survived, the other did not. So one made a sculpture of the other’s guillotined head… and launched an empire.

Intramural Theater • 28th December 2019

25 Hour Play Festival — Intramural Theater

Every December, Intramural Theater brings together artists from across New Orleans to take part in a delirious creative experiment. Playwrights, directors and actors are randomly split into five teams at 7:00PM, and then, after every team is given a single line that must be incorporated into each of the plays, such as “A Potato,” “You’re Not Larry,” “Your Hand!” or “Water,” along with another prompt (a costume or a prop), they must create a ten-minute play from scratch. Performances premiere the following night at the Fortress of Lushington.

Kickstarter • 13th November 2019

WOKE: A Dream Play

WOKE is a new play by Amelia Parenteau about an intimate interracial relationship, set entirely in a bed, directed by Emma S. Kimball.

New Statesman • 19th August 2019

“Everything that follows is true”: how verbatim theatre questions the meaning of truth

In Miracle Village, a community for convicted sex offenders in rural Florida, five men sit in a therapy class, and are made to introduce themselves. “Say what your offence is, and then say what you actually did,”

Dixon Place • 11th April 2017

(Projection)

(Projection) peels back the layers of a New York millennial apartment, subverting and reinforcing the classic living room play to reveal the universal truths of defining yourself in your 20’s....