Dear friends,

2020 has been… a lot. Crisis upon crisis has upended nearly everything, redirecting us and driving us to introspection along the way. Throughout the year, we’ve held gatherings online to process all that’s happening, as well as to explore and discuss wonderful plays. Each gathering also highlighted an organization doing good work amongst all the chaos. These organizations have their hands in the dirt and their eyes on a better world. 

This Giving Tuesday, we ask you to consider supporting one (or more!)  of the organizations we highlighted this year. Below, see a loosely-categorized list of heroes who are:

• Making and spreading theater
• Offering legal support and encouraging civic engagement
• Empowering people and communities
• Supporting asylum seekers and those navigating the immigration system
• Working to make our housing, healthcare, and education systems more equitable

Thank you so much. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Peace, power, and love to you,
Paul, Katie, Kathryn, and Hilarie

Dear Friends,

You surely know, but tomorrow is Election Day. Theater in Asylum has been committed to electoral politics for years, notably with The Debates. While many of you have voted early or absentee, for those of you who have not yet voted, tomorrow is your last opportunity this time around. If it is safe for you to do so, please, please vote. For New Yorkers, know that polls are open from 6am-9pm and you can find your poll site and preview your ballot here. For those outside New York, you can find everything you need at Vote.gov. You know already, but this election is so important.

After you've voted, we encourage you to take care of yourself and your neighbors. Check in with loved ones. Take this opportunity to join an activist organization or mutual aid group. Perhaps watch Boxcutter's hilarious and wonderful Judy for President or dig in to Mary Oliver's poetry. Perhaps write an old friend a letter. Write yourself a letter. This is a week to remember and we're going to need each other, and art, to interpret and process it all.

Theater in Asylum continues to meet regularly for reading, discussing, organizing, self- and co-educating, and brainstorming. If you're looking for some (online) community, please feel free to reach out to Paul, Katie, Hilarie, or Kathryn. And who knows what will happen, but perhaps we'll see you on the street. Wherever we see you next, please know that we wish you love and safety.

Peace, power, and love to you,
Paul Bedard, Katie Palmer, Kathryn Appleton, and Hilarie Spangler

Dear Friends,
When we first saw Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me at New York Theatre Workshop, we were floored. The piece is searing and soaring, a call to arms and a calling in. This (mostly) one-woman play looks at the US Constitution and notes who's left out of it. It's a wonderful piece and we hope you will join us to watch and discuss it.

Anyone who has been to our Cold Readings will recognize the format, but we'll meet on Wednesday, October 28 (just days before the election!) at 7pm for introductions and to hear some background on the play from our facilitators. Then we'll all push play at the same time on the Amazon stream**, and finally gather again for a discussion when the stream is over. The evening should conclude around 10pm.

See you there!

Peace, power, and love to you,
Paul Bedard, Katie Palmer, Kathryn Appleton, and Hilarie Spangler



**Note**
Theater in Asylum is committed to financial accessibility. If you do not have access to an Amazon Prime account, please do not let this stop you from joining us. Please reach out to us and we help you figure something out to watch the play.

Hello All,

Taking the past few months to reflect on all Theater in Asylum accomplished in its first ten years has been dizzying and humbling. We are so grateful for the time, space, and trust we received this decade to make work and share stories with you, our community. So much has changed since we’ve started, both in our company and the world. The need for empathy, solidarity, and investigation into history has only grown more urgent.

This year has been challenging but it also gave us the opportunity to reflect on our mission statement and reach for deeper clarity and purpose. To construct our new Mission, Vision, and Values, we are following the process we always use: thinking through every angle thoroughly, leaning on our community for feedback, engaging in some useful debate, and eventually making a leap of faith. We cannot wait to share a revised mission statement, and with it, a renewed purpose.

But first, a toast — to the asylum we’ve built. A sanctuary for theater and conversation where thinking deeply, rigorously, and empathically is hallowed. A shelter for our characters — many of them victims of oppression in their lives — who are brought into our space, where their art and stories may shine again.

By Paul Bedard

Learn more about our 10 year commemoration here

The Debates has been, by far, our biggest project. It’s been through many iterations, encompassing dozens of public events, hundreds of people, and nearly a thousand footnotes in the published scripts.

The project began in Ithaca, NY, where I was serving as a Drama League Directing Fellow at the Hangar Theatre. It was Summer 2015: Obama was president, Bernie Sanders was a relative unknown, and our current clown-in-chief was still a harmless sideshow. The 2016 presidential campaign was just beginning in earnest, and I was curious to explore previous presidential debates. With an eager company of young actors, I began digging into excerpts of the infamous 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. We sought to explore what was specific to the very first televised debate, the debate that literally invented the genre. During this exploration, however, we discovered that the process—analyzing a debate transcript, having different people “try on” the candidates, and experimenting with candidates’ projected images—was more compelling and empowering than the show we initially set out to make. By the time my fellowship ended and I returned to New York, the Kennedy/Nixon idea was scrapped and we dove full steam ahead into what became The Debates 2016.

Between October 2015 and April 2016, we presented nine Watch Parties and Political Analysis Meetings; expanded our team of actors and researchers; and presented six distinct workshops, clarifying our newfound process along the way. By the time the field of candidates had dwindled to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, we had a show we were proud of. We presented The Debates 2016: Democratic Primary Edition in New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, before each state’s primary, and the response was thrilling. NY City Lens wrote, "Not only was The Debates… about politics. It was politics." The Hartford Courant wrote, "[The Debates] was the way to spend the nervous hours before voting... Forthright, in-your-face, up-to-the-minute..."

That September, we began the process again with the general election. We watched and analyzed the debates, crafted a script and performed at the beloved Under St. Marks theater the night before Hillary Clinton’s assured victory. And… we all know how that election turned out. We learned, however, that our Debates work is strongest when it shines a light on challenging questions and complicated candidates. The problem with the 2016 general election was that, for our community, the decision was crystal clear. The notion of stepping into that particular Republican nominee’s shoes and words, with empathy, was just… not possible for us.

We believe there is an audience for a Debates show that includes our 45th president, and a company who can make it, but Theater in Asylum is not it. We do our best work when there is a diversity of political opinion in the room and when there’s something to debate. With the general election, we didn’t have those things. The choice was clear for our community, and this led to a production that didn’t expose choices or the debate we assumed was needed.

In the last four years, the country has changed in ways we never thought imaginable. The urgency around the 2020 election couldn’t be higher, and when the Democratic primary debates started in June 2019, it was clear that we needed to mount another Debates show. The Debates 2020 roared with excitement, following over 20 candidates with 12 Watch Parties, 10 Political Analysis Meetings, 5 Cabarets, and a much-needed debate about the candidates and issues. We had political diversity in the room, with a left contingent split between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a moderate contingent that split and shifted throughout the year. When the pandemic struck and the production was cancelled, we were again at a loss. What do we do with this work?

With the country facing both a raging virus and an urgent reckoning with race, we moved online and reframed much of the show. The Debates 2020 performed on Zoom just before New York’s rescheduled primary on June 21, 2020, and while the race for the Democratic nomination was largely already decided, the piece bloomed and provoked an incredible conversation about our country that reverberated in our community for weeks. Who were we and who are we, really, as a country? What does it mean to rally behind a candidate –– which parts of their and your own identity are you connecting to? And which parts are you disconnecting from?

I am immensely proud of The Debates and the team who followed its evolving raison d'être. I’m so grateful to these people for their bravery and curiosity. Our scripts are still online, available to all. I don’t know how they’ll age and I'll be curious to revisit them in a few months or a few years, after we’ve hopefully begun healing and growing as a nation. I know that the work we did on the 2016 and 2020 primary contests was relevant and useful to the team and our community. I look forward, with hope, to future debates and the chance to ask again: who are we, and who do we want to be?

By Paul Bedard

Learn more about our 10 year commemoration here

Early in 2015, while preparing to apply to be a Drama League Directing Fellow, I was devouring scripts and trying to come up with brilliant production ideas to include in my application. Daunted by the amount of reading and the often-dispiriting notion of having brilliant ideas alone, some friends and I began meeting to read and discuss plays together. This was in the basement of the indoor kids playground where I worked at the time, and the casual gathering quickly grew into one of Theater in Asylum’s most successful and enduring programs.

Six years and 90 plays later, the Cold Reading series remains one of my favorite things. For those who have never been, we gather with no preparation to read and then discuss a play. For years, Katie or I facilitated each Cold Reading, but about a year ago we started commissioning guest facilitators, which opened up the curation of plays and has been so wonderful. This year our playwrights Gethsemane Herron-Coward and Willie Johnson, playwright and director Ran Xia, and actors Kara Hankard, Jonas Cohen, and Manuela Sosa all facilitated. Our Community Engagement Manager Hilarie Spangler has also been facilitating. We’ve assembled quite the team to pick plays and run readings!

Looking back on all the plays we’ve read, however, some interesting trends emerge. The two eras we’ve read from the most are the 1990s and the 1930s. After the United States, the country whose plays we’ve read the most is Germany, followed by the UK. Our most repeated playwrights are Bertolt Brecht and Caryl Churchill. The oldest plays we read are by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, who lived from 935-1001. The newest plays we’ve read are from this year, written in quarantine by dozens of playwrights, commissioned by the Play at Home series.

When New York went into quarantine earlier this year, we shifted our monthly in-person gatherings to weekly online gatherings. Our community grew both in number and geographical reach, with people outside of New York newly able to participate. We now regularly have readers from multiple states, countries, and even continents. The discussions have also grown. While we nearly always discuss questions like, “What stood out?” and “What challenges would arise in producing this today?”, the pandemic, the uprising for Black lives, and the upcoming election have brought tremendous urgency to the issues of societal responsibility, equity, representation, power, and protest. These have supercharged our discussions recently and brought necessary lenses to work new and old.

Looking ahead, we’ll reach our 100th Cold Reading this December and I couldn’t be more proud and grateful. Cold Readings began as a place to share an overwhelming stack of plays to read for an application (which succeeded, by the way), but has since grown to something so much more valuable. I cherish my Wednesday nights and look forward to the plays, the completely unprepared performances, and the thrilling discussions with friends.

Cheers, Dionysus!