Tolpavakoothu is a traditional form of shadow puppetry from Kerala, in southern India. Like many similar performance traditions, tolpavakoothu faces an uncertain future because of social and cultural changes. However, it’s facing up to those challenges in some unique ways. Dr. Claudia Orenstein of Hunter College joins us to explain what tolpavakoothu is, and to introduce us to the Pulavars, the family of puppeteers who are finding new and surprising ways to keep their tradition alive while bringing it into the twenty-first century.

What was the business of theatre like in Shakespeare’s time? We don’t have many records, but one fascinating document has survived: a book of accounts and memoranda (often inaccurately referred to as a diary) from Philip Henslowe, a businessman in 1590s London. Henslowe helped build the Rose Theatre, where a number of plays by Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and their contemporaries received their premieres. Now Dr. David Nicol of Dalhousie University is bringing Henslowe’s day-by-day account of early modern show business into the twenty-first century. Dave’s site, “Henslowe’s Diary … as a Blog!” follows the entries in Henslowe’s book day by day, introducing readers to plays ranging from the familiar to the forgotten, as well as trying to make sense of how financially successful each performance was. Dave joined us to talk about Henslowe’s book, the business of running a theatre in early modern England, and how he decided to turn this valuable document into a blog.

We know that the history of theatre and performance contains plenty of insensitive, even offensive, tropes and stereotypes. We also tend to think of ourselves as having left those stereotypes in the past, where they belong. However, as this week’s guest reveals, our popular culture still contains plenty of uncomfortable reminders of those types, and they’re often woven into the fabric of beloved cultural institutions in a way that forces us to come to terms with them, rather than simply pretend that they have nothing to do with us. Dr. Christian DuComb, author of Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia, joins us to talk about how these complicated issues appear in the figure of the “mummers wench,” a fixture of Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade for decades. The “wench” hearkens back to the nineteenth century and the days of the minstrel show, serving as yet another reminder that what we think is long-past is often very much still present.

Lorraine Hansberry’s reputation will always be inextricably bound up with her best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun. But who was the woman behind this landmark play? Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain explores Hansberry’s life in her new documentary Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, which premieres on PBS on 19 January 2018. Tracy’s film brings a new perspective to Hansberry, showing us not just the playwright who became the first African-American woman to have a play produced on Broadway, but also someone who was a political radical and who embraced her identity as a lesbian at a time when it was dangerous to do so. Tracy joins us to discuss her film and to give us new insights into this crucially important figure in American theatre.

We know Richard Brinsley Sheridan as the comic playwright responsible for The Rivals and The School for Scandal. However, one of his most important plays is a major departure from those works. His play Pizarro, an adaptation of an early melodrama by the German playwright August von Kotzebue about the Spanish invasion of Peru, became a smash hit on the London stage in 1799.

History can be a contentious subject, especially when it comes to determining how and what we remember. That’s especially true in Argentina, which is still trying to come to terms with the legacy of its period of military rule in the 1970s and 80s, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens. Theatre has been an especially important way for Argentinians to remember and reflect upon this dark era, a process which Dr. Noe Montez of Tufts University explores in his new book, Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe joins us to talk about his book, and about how Argentina’s theatres have served as an important part of the nation’s collective memory.

Would you watch a pregnant woman attempt to walk a tightrope without a safety net? Many people in London decided to do just that in 1863, and their curiosity turned to horror when the tightrope walker, Selina Powell, fell to her death. The accident prompted an outcry that even drew in Queen Victoria herself. Amy Meyer joins us this week to talk about accidents like the one that befell Powell. What drew audiences to such a risky spectacle? What did society make of woman performing such dangerous acts? The answers she’s found point to our own appetite for risk and danger—almost always at someone else’s expense—in our own favorite entertainments.

How do you train an actor? The answer to that question has changed over the course of theatrical history, but at least within the last century or so, standards for actor training have largely come from the teachings of theorists such as Constantin Stanislavski. However, we often don’t think about how these acting methods arose from specific historical and cultural contexts, and how they might not always meet the needs of a more diverse population of performers in the twenty-first century. Dr. Sharrell D. Luckett and Dr. Tia M. Shaffer have co-edited a new book, Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches, that explores some of the ways in which we can expand upon the legacy of traditional actor training to offer a more diverse array of perspectives. Sharrell joins us to talk about the book, the African roots of performance, and the legacy of Freddie Hendricks and his Hendricks Method for training young actors.

In our previous episode, we spoke with Dr. Erin Mee of New York University about kutiyattam, a style of theatre from southwest India that brings ancient Sanskrit plays to life. But what about the more recent history of Indian theatre? Erin joins us for the second part of our series to talk about how British colonialism, independence, and contemporary debates about gender and sexuality have shaped the development of Indian theatre over the past century.

How can a play whose script covers less than ten pages take weeks to perform? That’s just one of the many questions we delve into when we explore the world of kutiyattam, which is a particular way of performing Sanskrit drama in the southern Indian region of Kerala. Dr. Erin Mee of New York University introduces us to this fascinating art form, which keeps bringing classical Sanskrit plays back to life thousands of years after they were first performed. This is the first of a two-part series on theatre in India: join us next week, when Erin leads us on an exploration of how Indian theatre has developed in the decades since independence.