TALKBACK
Season 2 starts on October 19th - This year we're all about ACCESS. We’ve seen the stats. We’ve read the think pieces. Now we’re ready to TALKBACK. TALKBACK is the podcast for every dramatist or theater fan who wants, but maybe hasn’t seen, the inclusiveness we all imagined. TALKBACK entertains frank conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. We ask the tough questions and don’t have all the answers but dig into dialogue that’s vital and messy and real. Join host Christine Toy Johnson and her industry colleagues from the pulse of the American theatre on TALKBACK. Available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Join the conversation on twitter using #DGTalkBack.
Episodes
November 23, 2020 • 32 min
In our final episode of Season 2, Christine gets to chat with two longtime friends, Robert Barry Fleming and Charles Randolph-Wright about the concept of radical hospitality: the act of creating access where none existed by purposefully and actively removing barriers. Christine leads our conversation on how all artists can claim the space to tell their own stories and how radical hospitality can be extended towards the audiences fo...
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Mark as Played
November 16, 2020 • 35 min
The entire theater industry has found itself confronting a very specific access challenge this year. So many traditional boundaries have been broken. The fourth wall has been replaced with the Zoom screen, and the audience with a chat room. Christine chats with writers Nikkole Salter and Bianca Sams about how they’re thinking about work, audience, and opportunity - outside of the brick-and-mortar theater model with its traditional ...
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November 9, 2020 • 28 min
Age is just a number, right? Maybe not when it comes to the entertainment industry. Playwright Sarah Tuft (MARVEL-OUS MONICA; IN WHICH MONICA LEWINSKY IS A SUPERHERO HELL-BENT ON REVENGE, 110 Stories) and actor Caroline Aaron (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Edward Scissorhands) tell personal stories about their careers and how age has played a factor. Sarah tells Christine how she refused to accept the status quo and is on the executiv...
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November 2, 2020 • 35 min
Theater is upheld as an inclusive community. So, what does meaningful inclusion look like for artists with disabilities? Gregg Mozgala and Katy Sullivan talk with Christine about their roles in Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Cost of Living, their own advocacy work, and the extra labor they take on just by stepping into the rehearsal room.
To learn more about Gregg’s work visit https://queenstheatre.org/ or http://www.g...
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October 26, 2020 • 33 min
Is getting a Masters degree the best way to enter the theater industry? It’s a popular avenue to take, but it may not be the only way. Christine sits down with friends and colleagues KJ Sanchez and Vichet Chum as they dive into the realities of student loans, institutional racism, and a career in an insecure industry.
For more information on the MFA programs discussed today please visit:
Brown University MFA in Playwriting
Universi...
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October 19, 2020 • 30 min
Christine sits down with two writers and advocates, Georgia Stitt (Snow Child, Samantha Spade, Ace Detective, Founder of Maestra) and Lloyd Suh (The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery), to talk about the pipeline, who is granted access to being considered for jobs in the industry and why. You’ll hear their theories on why the pipeline is perpetuated, whose stories are being told, and how mus...
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November 25, 2019 • 57 min
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.
Later freelance critic and journalist Jose Solís and playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Theresa Rebeck talk about Jose’s first love- theater criticism and why boiling everything to thumbs up or down is damaging to the industry.
This episode features Leah Nanako Winkler ...
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November 18, 2019 • 66 min
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.
Then, Christine and Kristoffer are joined by Tony Award winning Hadestown Director Rachel Chavkin, actor and activ...
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Mark as Played
November 11, 2019 • 74 min
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 t...
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Mark as Played
November 4, 2019 • 60 min
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.
TalkBack i...
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October 28, 2019 • 42 min
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...
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October 21, 2019 • 54 min
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.
After a break, a panel ...
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Mark as Played
October 2, 2019 • 2 min
We’ve seen the stats. We’ve read the think pieces. Now we’re ready to TALKBACK.
TALKBACK is the podcast for every dramatist or theater fan who wants, but maybe hasn’t seen, the inclusiveness we all imagined. TALKBACK entertains frank conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. We ask the tough questions and don’t have all the answers but dig into dialogue that’s vital and messy and real. Join host Christine Toy Johnson an...
Share
Mark as Played
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