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I’m a thirty-seven-year-old white female. I work full-time as a producer at LORT A and B theatre in the Midwest and am also a freelance director. I care for two kids age two and four with my husband, who is an emergency medicine doctor. We have full-time daycare, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. My parents live 15 minutes away and my siblings live in town within a thirty-minute drive. My husband’s mother visits approximately monthly.

The following is a lightly edited, abridged version of a keynote address given at the National Theatre Conference on 16 January 2026. Even as our country comes undone, as the very foundation seems to be unraveling, as any semblance of agreements—the kind we grew up with that bind a civil society together—appears quaint, a thing of the past, I ask myself what matters. I still find myself saying, “the theatre.” We must continue to do our work. What is our work?

By 2016, the life I’d built around acting no longer felt sustainable. Days were consumed by survival jobs, nights by theatre and classes at an acting studio, and my rare days off went to film work. What had once been my passion felt like a cycle I couldn’t escape. I finally reached out to my acting teacher for help. I figured his experience as both an actor and studio owner would give him perspective.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, it claimed that Ukraine had no language and no culture. This isn't just a military assault; it is an assault on Ukrainian identity and culture itself. Playwright and screenwriter Laura Cahill was teaching screenwriting to teenagers in Ukraine when the full-scale invasion began in 2022, at which point she founded Young Playwrights Ukraine. She moderates this discussion with Andrii Bondarenko and Iryna Harets.

Chorus of Voices: Gender euphoria is bliss. Freedom to experience masculinity, femininity, and everything in between. Getting to show up as your own self. Gender euphoria is opening the door to your body and being home. Unabashed bliss. You can feel it. You can feel the relief. Feel safe. And the sense of validation and actualization. Or sometimes it means being confident in who you are. But also to see yourself reflected back. Or maybe not, but being excited to find out.

Livestreamed on this page on Monday 29 June 2026 at 11 a.m. HST (Honolulu, UTC -10) / 1 p.m. AKDT (Juneau, UTC -8) / 2 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 4 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 5 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 22:00 BST (London, UTC +1) / 23:00 CEST (Berlin, UTC +2). New York City Watch Me Work is a communal work session for anyone eager to nurture and sustain their creative process.

The Cultivating Cultural Resilience series is curated and hosted by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and the Center for International Theater Development. Pieces in this series are edited, abridged transcripts of events from Cultivating Cultural Resilience, an ongoing series of solidarity workshops, discussions, and resource exchange for artists and allies in times of duress.

A drama is enacted every day in colonized countries. –Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks …it seems that being visible does not always translate into being “seen,” being truly recognized as a person deserving of rights, care, and dignity. –Nathan Alexander Moore, “Transliminality: Black Transfemmes and the Limit of Visibility Politics” Last fall, accompanied by some friends, I went to see Prince Faggot, written by Jordan Tannahill, a white gay playwright from Canada.

Nicolas Shannon Savard: Hello, and welcome to Gender Euphoria: The Podcast, a series produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I'm your host, Nicolas Shannon Savard. My pronouns are they, them, and theirs. We are returning from a little mid-season break. Had to record some more interviews with the fabulous artists you'll be hearing from in the coming weeks. Today, it's just me on the mic.

About this Artist Caregiver I’m a cis white woman based in New England. Artistically, I’m a playwright, dramaturg, director, teacher, and founder/former artistic director of a play development organization. I care for my now legally adult, twenty-one-year-old daughter, N, who lives with a unique constellation of disabilities that don’t fit a specific disorder or diagnosis.