A series where poetry and theatre meet - in the edge-lands, in the wilderness. Hosted by OBIE-winning playwright Caridad Svich. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/caridad-svich/support
in this episode, i read from Fehinti Balogun's CAN I LIVE? which was originally presented by Complicite theatre as a digitally touring film. the text is published by TRANSMEDIA THEATRE PLAYS which I edited for Methuen Drama (2025).
in this episode I read Violet Affleck's powerful personal essay "A Chronically Il Earth" published May 18, 2025 in Yale Global Health Review.
in this episode I read the introduction to my new book Transmedia Theatre Plays (Methuen Drama, 2025).
in this episode I read the stories "Paper Pills" and "Mother" from Sherwood Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO (1919)
in this episode, i start reading Sherwood Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO (1919). The first piece called "The Book of Grotesques" and "Hands."
in this episode i read an excerpt from A.V. Marraccini's WE THE PARASITES (Sublunary Editions, 2023).
in this episode I read from Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs' HAND BOOK: A MANUAL ON PERFORMANCE, PROCESS AND THE LABOR OF LAUNDRY (Punctum Books, 2025) and Anne Boyer's A HANDBOOK OF DISAPPOINTED FATE (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018).
in this episode I read selected poems from Alina Stefanescu's new collection MY HERESIES (Sarabande Books, 2025):Byline, Be SkyTonight, As You Pace the GardenMy Father Explains Why They Left Me Behind When DefectingSocialization #2: Sky in the Other Languagesand Poem for the Blackbird.
in this episode I read from tracks 3 and 4 of my performance piece MINOTAUR.
on the passing of scholar and poet Joshua Clover, I read his essay "The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature" and some poems from his collection RED EPIC (2015).
in this episode, I read "The Anxious Classroom" essay by Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Goransson, and also where i riff for a while on creative writing in the classroom, reading, writing, teaching and being a respondent to art.
in this episode i read a new monologue from a work in progess. the monologue is titled "about the world."
in this episode, i read a monologue I forgot i had written! call it a re-discovery of a kind. the monologue is called Giving Thanks.
in this episode I read the first scene/monologue from my play SWANS, MERIDIAN.
in this episode I read excerpt from the play LITTLE BEAST (Piccola Bestia) by Tobia Rossi, translated from the Italian by Caterina Nonis. the play won the 2023 Carlo Annoni Prize for Drama. Rossi describes it as "almost a monologue."
In this episode I read an interview between playwright Athol Fugard and scholar-director Floyd Gaffney, which was published in the journal TheatreForum in 1992 in their first issue. I read it in memory of Fugard's passing this year 2025. But also in memory of TheatreForum as a journal that stopped publishing, and whose presence in the field is missed.
scene one from my play CLARA THOMAS BAILEY. a portrait of a life.
in this episode I read a scene from a new piece of mine that is in progress. the scene is called "Pancakes".
in this episode I talk about what led to the writing of KORA K and I read the first four scenes from it. KORA K is the story of a self and the space between truth and fiction. Or the story of a translator.
wherein I read Pinsky's Song on Porcelain essay from January 30, 2025.
in this episode I read "Bodies Will Swing" by Jeff Sharlet originally written on his substack blog Scenes from a Slow Civil War on February 15, 2025.
in this episode I read, in part (with a digression mid-way on Dickens' A Christmas Carol and more), the transcript of Unlimited Liabilities (July 31, 2023) with Nate Holdren from the Death Panel podcast co-hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. This episode is not meant to mimic their podcast but is a dramatic interpretation - my reading of the transcript itself - as experiment in performance.
in this episode I begin with a chat about the new year 2025, some thoughts on burnout culture in theatre, and then read Nate Holdren's new blog piece "It's the stupidity, stupid! (The economy does in fact suck).
in this episode the rest of the play with songs THRUSH is read by its author Caridad Svich. the play originally premiered in 2006 at Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, Texas. it is part of the trilogy of Land and Country Plays by Svich which include FUGITIVE PIECES (retitled on film as FUGITVE DREAMS) and RIFT. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
In this episode I read from scenes 1-12 of my play with songs THRUSH, which was originally produced at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, Texas in 2006. THRUSH: Scenes from war and after. Slaughter songs for broken times. A love story and vaudeville of the far and near country. A young woman walks the fields. A young man trails her. The ghost songs of the fallen rise in ballads, hymns, blues and swing as if torn from the roots of mad sorrow. Content warning: the play deals with themes and images of war crimes against humanity in poetic and abstract terms. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode I read author Gary Indiana's essay on artist Barbara Kruger "The War at Home" from his collection of essays UTOPIA'S DEBRIS (2008) published by Basic Books. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode I read Gabriel Winant's "The Baby and the Bathwater: Class Analysis and Class Formation after Deindustrialization" published online on October 1, 2024 in Historical Materialism. brill.com/hima --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode I read prose piece Watches by Jeff McMahon, originally published in the Table Talk from The The Threepenny Review in 2015. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode I read So Mayer's piece "gunge," which was originally posted July 25, 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
"The Orange and the Brick" an essay by Caridad Svich. featured in The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance edited by Noe Montez and Olga Sanchez Saltveit. Published 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
reading CJ THE X's WHAT IS TO BE DONE? A Manifesto to Return to Web 1.5, first posted on their website on March 1, 2024. https://www.cjthex.com/what-is-to-be-done/ continuing my recording of work of artists I admire. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in memory of scholar, poet, playwright, theatre-maker, director Kit Danowski, who passed away the week of July 29, 2024 (announced on July 31, 2024 on social media), a reading of their MANIFESTO: THEATRE FOR THE DEAD, published in Global Performance Studies, vol.3, no. 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv3n2a9 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
In this episode, I read scholar Pantea Javidan's important article "False Divisions and Dubious Equivalencies: children's rights during the Covid-19 pandemic." the article was published as an open access piece on ManchesterHive.com on July 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
reading from and engaging with chapter one and seven from Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (Published 2009, John Hunt Publishing) through the lens of modernism and post-modernism. with nods to Wallace Shawn, Julio Torres, Samuel Beckett, and more in passing. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
two readings in this episode: 1. from my essay on Maria Irene Fornes published in the Mentorship issue of The Dramatist Quarterly spring 2024 (Vol 26, No 2). and 2. Vicky Osterweil's "Work Will Set You Free" published on their substack All Cats Are Beautiful on July 17, 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
the introduction to Helen Iball's study guide to Sarah Kane's BLASTED (Methuen Drama, 2008) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
some text from work in progress, untitled desert play by Caridad Svich. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode, i continue musings on Samuel Beckett and Modernism. with excerpt from James McNaughton's SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE POLITICS OF AFTERMATH (Oxford University Press, 2018). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode I read from chapter one of Dalton Trumbo's novel JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN. (published by Penguin Random House edition 1984). the novel was written in 1938 and published in 1939. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an informal lecture/musing on the author Samuel Beckett, focusing a bit on his works KRAPP'S LAST TAPE and WAITING FOR GODOT, through a modernist lens. with excerpt from Steven Connor's book BECKETT, MODERNISM AND THE MATERIAL IMAGINATION published by Cambridge University Press. (2014) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
reading Elinor Fuchs' essay "Waiting for Recognition" (2007) first published by Modern Drama journal. University of Toronto Press. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
in this episode, I read T.S. Eliot's THE WASTE LAND. 434 lines. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an informal lecture musing on T.S. Eliot and Modernism, esp. in relation to THE WASTE LAND as a core text of Modernism. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an informal lecture on what begat/influenced Modernism in literature and art. key figures. key thinking. and as always, how capitalism intersects with all --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
reading from Nate Holdren's slow cancellation of the future. blog piece dated June 6, 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
the first in a series of informal musings on Modernism in literature. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
excerpt from David Barnett's book THEATRICALITY, PLAYTEXTS AND SOCIETY. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
reading from sections of the book PERFORMING GRIEF IN PANDEMIC THEATRES by Fintan Walsh. published by Cambridge University Press, 2024. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an excerpt from Sara Freeman's book Playwriting, Dramaturgy and Space published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 as part of the Cambridge Elements Contemporary Performance Texts series. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an informal lecture/reflection by Caridad Svich on the relationship among the text, the author and the reader --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support
an informal lecture on ghosts in writing - their function and their existence. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caridad-svich/support