The theaters may be closed, but theater artists continue to find new and innovative ways to create theater during these pandemic times. Prof. Scott Horstein’s current and recent projects highlight this range of theatrical activity. He is currently dramaturging the development of the new play The Great Khan and published a contribution in the volume Theater Artists Making Theater with No Theater.
Prof. Horstein works professionally as a dramaturg, or story consultant, for directors, playwrights, and theaters developing and producing new plays. His current project is dramaturging the development of The Great Khan by Michael Gene Sullivan (known in part as longtime writer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe) through the Rough Reading Series at Playwrights Foundation, one of the Bay Area’s leading play development centers. The Great Khan is a comedy that explores the unusual connection between a Black teenage boy struggling to grow up neither too fast nor too slow, and his historical hero, Genghis Khan. The Rough Readings stream Sat. Feb. 6 at 2pm and Mon Feb. 8 at 7:30 pm, more information at the Playwrights Foundation website.
Prof. Horstein’s contribution “no set meeting time,” a meditation on academic theater during the pandemic, was included in Theater Artists Making Theatre With No Theater: Spring 2020 from boutique press Tripwire Harlot Press, published in October 2020. The volume was featured in American Theater magazine. Its editors include prominent playwright and television producer Sheila Callaghan.