CalArts Center for New Performance

CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones hosts a conversation with Monty Cole, director of the CNP world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side , which premiered at REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles in February 2023. Over the project’s three year incubation at CalArts, Cole and his collaborators dug deep into Kennedy’s trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and myth...

Kaneza Schaal, recipient of the 2021 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Theater, joins a conversation with CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones. Schaal's performance works function as profound acts of invitation, presented in a wide range of contexts. The two artists, whose friendship has been furthered by their professional collaborations, discuss Schaal’s many fluencies—of language, histor...

We join a conversation between Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett as they discuss the creation of CNP's The George Project: A Liberation Through Hearing , a new seven-part audio play inspired by and adapted from When This War is Over, You’re Going to Get it George, a 1975 meditation on the brutal logics of war by artist Emilio Cruz. Cruz and Crockett share a lively discussion about the inquiries that forg...

Playwright Octavio Solis and CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) Associate Artistic Director Chi-wang Yang sit down together during rehearsals for their latest project, Scene with Cranes, a new play commissioned and produced by CNP. Their conversation recounts Solis’s early days in writing workshops with María Irene Fornés and staging plays in bars in the late 80s, and explores their creative...

Originally recorded via Zoom for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s digital platform  O!,  this special edition of our podcast brings that conversation to you, imbued with excerpts from the CNP world premiere production of The Carolyn Bryant Project .  For a full list of creative credits, visit https://centerfornewperformance.org/projects/carolyn-bryant/.

Ron Cephas Jones reveals his rigorous process of script analysis and answers questions that speak to an actor’s life and practice. As he address questions from the CalArts community — both pre- and mid-pandemic — Ron offers insight into the self-care, self-determination, and commitment of an artist whose accolades have never deterred him from continuing to seek, learn, and grow.

In January 2020, CalArts Center for New Performance's 2020-21 Resident Artist Daniel Alexander Jones met up with two next-generation artists and students at CalArts—performer/playwright Sarahjeen François and designer/performance artist Amy Chiao. A critically acclaimed playwright, essayist, performer and musician, Jones goes deep into Black American and Queer Performance traditions, exploring the...