The Brooklyn Rail

In Dialogue

There’s A Direness To A Mundane Existence
Talking Brand New Worlds with Trish Harnetiaux

By Jess Barbagallo

Trish Harnetiaux and I met at Mac Wellman’s School for Degenerates, also known as the playwriting program at Brooklyn College, in the fall of 2007. I immediately took a liking to Trish—her no-bullshit sensibility, pragmatic intelligence, and wry sense of humor.

Stanley Kowalski Isn’t Polish Anymore
Becca Blackwell on the Making of They, Themself and Schmerm

By Jess Barbagallo

I met Becca Blackwell eight years ago, at a table read for a play called Pony, by Sylvan Oswald. Becca had bright red hair, wore their masculinity with ease (they/their/them are Becca’s pronouns of choice) and acted like a pro: an inspirational figure for a then-twenty-four-year-old baby butch like myself, new to the downtown theater.

“A current gaining more wave:” 25 Years of Artist Development at Brooklyn Arts Exchange

By Jess Barbagallo

In 2012, I had the honor of being fully inducted into the BAX community as an artist-in-residence, so profiling the space feels like a bit of a homecoming. I remember it as a thrilling time in my art life. Not since the days of my luxurious collegiate conservatory actor training had I been granted such access to studio space without the gnawing consideration of how I might pay for it alongside the pressure to produce something great.

In Dialogue

Private Collection: LAUREN BAKST with Jess Barbagallo

By Jess Barbagallo

I keep seeing Lauren Bakst’s performance work Private Collection: in the gallery space of a Bushwick apartment complex, the sanctuary of St. Mark’s Church, a downtown loft on Broadway.

In Dialogue

Tunneling through Density: Ben Gassman's NYC

By Jess Barbagallo

In a delightful scene from Ben Gassman’s unproduced play Haircuts for Men & Boys, written in 2010, a guy walks into a barbershop of Greek ownership in Queens.