This is a Classic: The Expand the Canon Theatre Podcast

This year, we released a book instead of a list! Still, our Research Team was hard at work. These episodes do a deeper dive on what it's like on the inside.Though they've been veterans of our Reading Committee, actor Aziza Gharib, playwright Regina Robbins, and director-dramaturg Kate Pitt were new to our Research Team this year! They chat about the difference between those processes, what it's like to go further into the process, and what discoveries awaited them.

This year, we released a book instead of a list! Still, our Research Team was hard at work. These episodes do a deeper dive on what it's like on the inside. Actors Rachel Schmeling and Desirée Baxter have been strong members of Expand the Canon –– back from when they were both members of Hedgepig Ensemble. Together, they talk about the shift in brand and vision, how the mission is still connected, and what it's been like to expand their experience of Hedgepig.

If you are looking for a piercing drama about family, poverty, and access to healthcare redolent of “August: Osage County”… consider this raw, tender one-act. In Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Plumes, mother Charity grapples with whether she can afford medical treatment for her ailing daughter. Unsure if the treatment will be successful, Charity must decide whether it would be better to honor her daughter’s life by way of an extravagant funeral instead. This play is a moving exploration of grace and dignity under the obscene circumstances of poverty and inadequate access to healthcare.If you’re looking for an elegant, subtle, and subversive blend of heart and politics… Alice Childress works her magic again with Florence. Set in a train station in the Jim Crow south, Mama waits to board to New York City, planning to bring her daughter Florence home from trying to “make it” as a stage actress. A jaded white actress awaits the same train, and though first seeming to help, it becomes clear she thinks nothing of Florence’s prospects –– and Mama has to decide if she'll support or deny her daughter's dreams. This sinuous story holds the tension of rebellion and heartbreak, painting a vivid picture of the so-called white northern ally erasure of Black joy, worth, and humanity. Hosted by Triza Cox and Emily Lyon.

If you’re looking for a cousin of commedia with a razz on dads… Nannuccio & His Fifteen Stepdaughters by Sister Annalena Odaldi should do the trick. This short and bittersweet farce tells the tale of Nannuccio Di Pierone, a widower down on his luck, looking to remarry using the goods and riches his deceased wife left in her will. The only problem is, she actually left everything for her fifteen daughters’ dowries, and not to the avaricious, self-aggrandizing Nannuccio. What will happen if the law gets involved? This play is a wise-cracking, smart, almost tragicomedy about greed, inheritance, and the absurdity of male ego.If you’re looking for a satirical comedy where every character lives life in the panic lane and practices the opposite of what they preach… consider Catherine the Great’s Oh, These Times! A maid attempts to help her naive lady marry the sweet Mr. Milksop, while dodging her grandmother’s fears of lower class social climbers. From catty gossips to sheltered virgins, no one seems happy with their station –– and their schemes and complaints pile up. Preempting Chekhov’s darkly yearning comedic sense by 100 years, Oh, These Times! is a searing reflection of our modern day social anxieties and the farces we put ourselves through to soothe them.Hosted by Triza Cox and Gagarin

If you’re looking for a one-person piece that grapples with the legacy of women writers and the artifice of gender… consider this sharp short by Wu Zao. In A Reflection in Disguise, a writer grapples with her inner idealized artistic self and the boxes society has placed her into. She poses before a portrait of herself cross-dressed as a male scholar and sings to the portrait about her frustrations as a woman of talent. Can she ever truly reconcile the two selves and win the acclaim she deserves? Through lush Chinese poetry, this monologue yields searing insight into the artifice of gender and the psyche of women in literature in the 19th Century.If you’re looking for a play that leverages the existentialism of Beckett but ratchets up the stakes through erotic powerplay… you’ll love Maria Irene Fornés’ Tango Palace. Isidore, a genderfluid bon vivant, has trapped their lover, the earnest and noble Leopold, in a room. The space becomes the pair’s entire universe and the stage on which they dance, dissect, and detonate their desires. The dangerous co-dependence of their erotic relationship spills over as they tango, driving them towards death in this searing and sensual examination of masculinity and destructive desire. Hosted by Gagarin and Kalina Ko.