KAREN MALPEDE

Karen Malpede is the author, and frequently the director, of 22 plays. With the actor-director-producer, George Bartenieff, she co-founded Theater Three Collaborative in 1995. She is author of the memoir Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths (Vine Leaves Press, 2025). Her recent plays are: Troy Too (HERE, 2023); Blue Valiant (Farm Arts Collective, YouTube, 2021); Other Than We (La MaMa, 2018, podcast for Columbia University’s Earth Institute, 2019); Extreme Whether (La MaMa, 2016; ARTCOP21, Paris, 2015; Theater for the New City, 2014); Dinner During Yemen, (Signature Theater, New York, 2018); Hermes in the Anthropocene: A Dogologue (University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2019; Reed College, Portland, 2015); The Beekeeper’s Daughter (Theater for the New City, New York, 2016; Theater Row Theater, 1996; Bleeker Street Theater, 1995; Dionysus Festival, Italy, 1994); Another Life (Art of Justice Festival, Gerald W. Lynch Theater, September 11, 2011; Irondale, 2012; Theater for the New City, 2013; Guild Hall, London, 2013); Iraq: Speaking of War (CUNY–Graduate Center, New York, 2006; Culture Project, New York, 2007). With George Bartenieff, she co-adapted and directed I Will Bear Witness, (Obie Award, Classic Stage, 2000; New End Theatre, London; English Theatre, Berlin; Theater J tour, Germany and Austria 2001–2005). She is author of the anthology Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether (Intellect, 2016); editor of Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays Northwestern, 2011), and author of an anthology of her early work A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays. Her short plays, fiction, and essays on ecofeminism, the climate crisis, a new green Federal Theater, bearing witness, the Iraq war, and the U.S. torture program, have been published in The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Dark Matter, Howlround, Transformations, Torture Magazine, New Theater Quarterly, TDR, New York Times, and elsewhere. She has taught theater and literature at Smith College, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and John Jay College–CUNY.

An excerpt from “The Necessity of a New Green Federal Theatre Project,” in HOWLROUND THEATRE COMMONS by Karen Malpede

At worst, we will be confronting massive losses: home, seasonal regularity, and species whose sounds and actions pollinate, fertilize, and please us so. We need to share this grief, not deny it. At best, we will be coming into a new sense of the human as no longer apart from and dominating nature, but relishing, embracing, loving, and enhancing it. We might cease to be so lonely, violent, and grasping, in this new, far more fragile world, for we shall need our connectedness to one another, to creatures, and to other living things. As we become increasingly aware of the sentient lives of plants and animals, our own sentient awareness will become more alert and pleasurable. We will live with less certainty, less stuff, but we will understand, value, and use well what we make and share. An end to “othering” is essential to this vision. The racism and sexism that damage us so will be fully seen and in the seeing, undone, as new, equitable relationships are given shape . . .

What moral choices will we make as the climate continues to narrow the range of options? How can consciousness itself transform within the constrictions of using and having less, but sharing, experiencing, and contemplating more? As the natural world is hurt, as species and habitats die, it is important to recall in words the beauty we know and remember and the possibilities of rewilding someday. It is important not to alienate or shock so much as to touch and move. It is important to increase our capacities for empathy, an evolutionary trait that might be being lost. To open people up to our interrelatedness to ourselves and to all species. These are radical acts for which theatre is uniquely suited.

For more on Karen Malpede’s work, visit: www.theaterthreecollaborative.org

On Wikipedia: Karen Malpede