During the early months of the pandemic, live theater shut down completely. Leslie Scott-Jones, a theater director and producer, was looking for a way to continue her work. Grounds: A Blackcast was born. This fictional podcast follows five Black professors at a predominantly white university in the south as they navigate work and life. And: Contemporary fiction these days is experimental, genre-crossing, and form-breaking. But one form that hasn’t quite made into the fiction mainstream: theater. Kate Kremer is a playwright, teacher at UVa Wise, and editor of 53rd State Press. She publishes new, contemporary plays as books that are meant to be read by anybody, not just theater-goers.

Later in the show: Ten years ago if you asked a classroom of college students if they were feminists, most of them would say no. Today, Jessica Del Vecchio says her feminism and performance class has a waiting list. Culture has shifted and at the front lines of that shift, you’ll find experimental theater. Plus: When we teach math to third graders we use songs and games and movement. But step into a college math class and you’re likely to see rows of students staring ahead at a teacher talking. Kerrigan Sullivan is a theater professor and she says that the interaction and games of improv can--and should--be used in college classrooms, regardless of the subject being taught.

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