Long before Western-style theatre came to what is now Iran, a unique performance tradition had already developed that fused song, movement, and religion. Known as “ta’ziyeh,” it has since spread among Shiite communities in Iraq and Lebanon, as well as even farther afield. William O. Beeman, chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, introduces us to the fascinating world of ta’ziyeh in this episode.

The New Yorkers, a risqué collaboration between New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno, Cole Porter, and Herbert Fields, hasn’t been seen onstage since it debuted in 1930. In fact, it hasn’t really existed, at least not in the sense of there being a definitive script of the show. The New Yorkers provides us with a fascinating snapshot of the Broadway musical at a time when it was still as much revue as “book musical,” and of an entertainment industry that hadn’t yet been muzzled by production codes that attempted to enforce “public decency.” Now, New York City Center Encores! has revived The New Yorkers, with the help of some archival research and some additions from other Cole Porter shows. Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel spoke with the Theatre History Podcast to explain how this version of the show, which runs from March 22 – 26, captures the spirit of the original production.

Western theatre tends to get most of our attention, but practically every culture has its own rich and vibrant performance tradition. Our guest Dr. Steven (Siyuan) Liu, of the University of British Columbia, is an expert in one such tradition: modern Chinese theatre. Developed as a response to the changing cultural and political landscape of twentieth-century China, spoken-word theatre, or huaju, became an important part of the country’s distinguished performing arts scene.

Most stereotypes of Ireland have more to do with idyllic rural scenes than busy city life. But, as Beth Mannion points out in her book, The Urban Plays of the Early Abbey Theatre: Beyond O’Casey, there’s an entire sub-genre of plays depicting life in major cities like Dublin in the early 20th century. The most famous of these are the plays in Sean O’Casey’s trilogy (The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars), but O’Casey was just one small part of a much wider and richer body of work by Irish playwrights who reflected what it was like to live in urban Ireland.

Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here tells the story of a fictional populist who rises to power and establishes a Fascist regime in the United States. The novel soon became a play, produced by Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theatre Project. Some eighty years after the play premiered, it’s become a topic of conversation again because of its perceived relevance to the current political climate, and a number of theatre companies have revived it. Paul Gagliardi is an expert on the Federal Theatre Project, and his recent HowlRound article explores both the history of It Can’t Happen Here’s original run and the renewal of interest in it in the twenty-first century.

Spain’s New World colonies might be the last place that you’d expect to find a cross-dressing nun. However, a famous memoir from the 17th century, chronicling the life and surprising career of Catalina de Erauso, became wildly popular for its account of her military exploits in what’s now South America. The memoir was adapted into a play, La monja alfèrez, or The Lieutenant Nun, and it became a hit on the stage back in Spain. The play’s never been translated into English before, but now Mac Test of Boise State University is working on one. Join us as Mac shares the surprising story behind this unique play.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream is one of the best-known plays from Spain’s “Siglo de Oro,” or Golden Age, in the 17th century. However, even many fans of the play don’t realize that there’s a second version, written late in Calderon’s life, that incorporates many of the same speeches and themes but also transforms other aspects of the play. George Drance, co-director Kelly Johnston, and Magis Theatre Company are producing Calderon’s two versions of the play together for the first time at LaMaMa in New York, and he joined the podcast to talk about the production.

You might think it’s virtually impossible to discover new work by a playwright who’s been dead for nearly 400 years, but that’s just what Alejandro Garcia-Reidy of Syracuse University did in 2014. He talks about his work with Lope de Vega’s Mujeres y Criados (Women and Servants), a play that sheds new light on the important and prolific playwright from Spain’s “Golden Age.”

Bert Williams was one of the most important African-American performers in the history of the American stage. He became one of the first African-American superstars and starred in what was arguably the first African-American plays on Broadway. Now, actor and playwright Jeremy Morris is sharing Williams’s story in a new play, The Top of Bravery.

We tend to think of the middle of the twentieth century as a litany of horrors, from the trenches of the First World War and the atrocities of the Second to the fear of nuclear annihilation that came with the early decades of the Cold War. However, as Dr. Charlotte Canning of the University of Texas at Austin chronicles in her new book, On the Performance Front: US Theatre and Internationalism, there were also plenty of theatre artists during this time who believed that they could bring about a better future by sharing their work with the world.