TCG Books and Arena Stage to Present Conversation & Book Signing with Todd London

Theatre Communications Group and Arena Stage will present a book release celebration for The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theatre by Zelda Fichandler, edited by Todd London, and published by TCG Books. This event will take place at the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle at Arena Stage on Tuesday, April 9 at 6:30 p.m. Free tickets are available at this link and include an option to purchase the book at a discounted price.

This volume gathers sixty years of essays, speeches, and manifestos by the founding mother of the resident professional theatre movement. As a founder and artistic director of the flagship Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and chair of New York University’s Graduate Acting program, the late Zelda Fichandler changed the where and how of the American theatre. The Long Revolution gathers Fichandler’s most prescient writing about that movement, ranging over such topics as “The Institution as Artwork,” “The Profit in NonProfit,” “Race and a Deepening Aesthetic,” and “Creativity and the Public Mind.” It also includes intimate portraits of artists with whom she frequently collaborated and director’s notes from the major productions that defined her vision. Celebrated as the defining architect and builder of the most sweeping transformation of twentieth-century American theatre, her brilliant writing reestablishes Fichandler as one of its most expansive and provocative thinkers.

Todd London

a leading figure in U.S. non-profit theatre for more than 35 years, has been an artistic director, educator, arts journalist and essayist, public speaker, theatre historian, and advocate for artist-centered practices. Todd spent 18 seasons as Artistic Director of New York's New Dramatists, the nation's oldest laboratory theatre for playwrights, where he worked closely with more than a hundred and fifty of America’s leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. Under his artistic leadership, New Dramatists earned a special Tony® Honor and the Obie’s Ross Wetzsteon Award. He also served as the Executive Director of the University of Washington's School of Drama, where he held the Floyd U. Jones Family Endowed Chair in Drama. He recently headed the MFA Playwriting Program and, from 2018-22, served on the faculty at the New School, School of Drama. He has taught extensively, including at New York University, Harvard, American University, and, for ten years, at the Yale School of Drama. 

Hana S. Sharif currently serves as Artistic Director of Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, D.C. She has enjoyed a multi-faceted theatre career, including roles as an artistic leader, director, playwright, and producer with a specialty in strategic and cross-functional leadership. Hana has held various roles at theatre companies around the country, including Nasir Productions, Hartford Stage, ArtsEmerson, Baltimore Center Stage, and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. When she was named the Augustin Family Artistic Director of The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in 2018, she became the first Black woman to lead a major regional theater. Hana holds a BA from Spelman College and an MFA from the University of Houston. 

This event is part of TCG’s Plays for the People campaign, the goal of which is to increase access to dramatic literature for a significant number of individuals and emphasize the play as a rich and contemporary form of literature.