The Brooklyn Rail

I Want You in My Zoom

By Eliza Bent

Virtual theater doesn’t have to suck. Playwright and performer Eliza Bent meditates on embracing a radical new world and creating art in a place that is the seeming antithesis of a theater. Through Karen, I Said (2020), each facet of her changing life coalesced into a celebrated performance on Zoom. Here, she reflects on that work, and leaves readers with some tips on how to create and endure a virtual performance that may not offer where we want to be, but at least we’re there together.

In Conversation

The Jerk Comes Full Circle: Reflections on Developing, Dramaturging, and Directing Fake Friends’ Cinematic and Theatrical Feat

By Rory Pelsue, Cat Rodríguez, and Ariel Sibert

In October, as theaters remained dark for a seventh consecutive month and the content-starved internet feasted on memes to ready itself for the long, dry winter, a new performance-media company emerged from the sweat non-profit theaters drowned in while trying to stay afloat: Fake Friends was born, and so was a hybrid art form.

How the Flea Become the Fled

By Joey Sims

The racial uprisings of this past summer rippled throughout the theater world, where Off-Off-Broadway’s the Flea Theater was slammed for its history of racial and economic injustices that long left its artists unsupported and, now, unmoored: in a recent letter, the Flea has decided to dissolve its artistic programs, leaving those who fought for change without titles, but not without community.