Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Day for Night with Caridad Svich

in this episode i return to the podcast with a reading of one of my short pieces aPeeling. first seen in the Something Other blog.

in this episode I read and reflect upon Nate Holdren's blog piece "A letter on epistemological breaks, morality, and the current conjuncture" originally written/posted on October 18, 2025 as an open source essay.

an excerpt from a new play of mine called WAR PAINTING.

an essay about what the hug can mean in theatre.

an essay about when a scene in a play is labelled as a "money" scene.

an essay about what it is like for a writer to be cast off to the wilderness.

an essay about what happens when theatre self censors.

an essay on theatre's relationship to capitalism.

an essay about storytelling and what the campfire metaphor even means.

in this episode i read from my essay "language games" where i talk about writing in Spanish and bilingually in an Anglophone theatre.

in this episode i read an essay i wrote about theatre, class system and who gets kept in and who gets kept out: "Three card monte or the theatre shell game"

in this episode, i read the first essay from my substack called pocket theatre or slow news from old wars: "I Miss When Plays were just plays."

in this episode I read from poet Andrea Gibson's work in honor of their memory. the poems are from their collection YOU BETTER BE LIGHTNING (Button Poetry, 2021), as follows:

"Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record In Goosebumps"

"The Year of No Grudges, Or Instead of Writing a Furious Text, I try a Poem"

"The Museum of Broken Relationships"

"Time Piece"

in this episode I read Dan O'Brien's pamphlet 40 QUESTONS FOR A POLITICAL PLAY. published by Calque Pamphlets. Calquepress. (2025)

in this episode I read and reflect upon Sara Ahmed's "A Useful Manifesto" (published July 11, 2025 on their substack feministkilljoys).

in this episode I read the second half of Tobi Haslett's essay "Magic Actions" (summer 2021, nplusone.mag/issue-40

in this episode I read the first half of Tobi Haslett's essay "Magic Actions" (summer 2021, nplusone.mag/issue-40/

in this episode I read from Andy Smith's new collection PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE (June 2025, INK Concrete Pub).

in this episode, i read from Fehinti Balogun's CAN I LIVE? which was originally presented by Complicite theatre as a digitally touring film. the text is published by TRANSMEDIA THEATRE PLAYS which I edited for Methuen Drama (2025).

in this episode I read Violet Affleck's powerful personal essay "A Chronically Il Earth" published May 18, 2025 in Yale Global Health Review.

in this episode I read the introduction to my new book Transmedia Theatre Plays (Methuen Drama, 2025).

in this episode I read the stories "Paper Pills" and "Mother" from Sherwood Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO (1919)

in this episode, i start reading Sherwood Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO (1919). The first piece called "The Book of Grotesques" and "Hands."

in this episode i read an excerpt from A.V. Marraccini's WE THE PARASITES (Sublunary Editions, 2023).

in this episode I read from Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs' HAND BOOK: A MANUAL ON PERFORMANCE, PROCESS AND THE LABOR OF LAUNDRY (Punctum Books, 2025) and Anne Boyer's A HANDBOOK OF DISAPPOINTED FATE (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018).

in this episode I read selected poems from Alina Stefanescu's new collection MY HERESIES (Sarabande Books, 2025):

Byline, Be Sky

Tonight, As You Pace the Garden

My Father Explains Why They Left Me Behind When Defecting

Socialization #2: Sky in the Other Languages

and Poem for the Blackbird.

in this episode I read from tracks 3 and 4 of my performance piece MINOTAUR.

on the passing of scholar and poet Joshua Clover, I read his essay "The Irreconcilable: Marx after Literature" and some poems from his collection RED EPIC (2015).

in this episode, I read "The Anxious Classroom" essay by Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Goransson, and also where i riff for a while on creative writing in the classroom, reading, writing, teaching and being a respondent to art.

in this episode i read a new monologue from a work in progess. the monologue is titled "about the world."

in this episode, i read a monologue I forgot i had written! call it a re-discovery of a kind. the monologue is called Giving Thanks.

in this episode I read the first scene/monologue from my play SWANS, MERIDIAN.

in this episode I read excerpt from the play LITTLE BEAST (Piccola Bestia) by Tobia Rossi, translated from the Italian by Caterina Nonis. the play won the 2023 Carlo Annoni Prize for Drama. Rossi describes it as "almost a monologue."

In this episode I read an interview between playwright Athol Fugard and scholar-director Floyd Gaffney, which was published in the journal TheatreForum in 1992 in their first issue. I read it in memory of Fugard's passing this year 2025. But also in memory of TheatreForum as a journal that stopped publishing, and whose presence in the field is missed.

scene one from my play CLARA THOMAS BAILEY. a portrait of a life.

in this episode I read a scene from a new piece of mine that is in progress. the scene is called "Pancakes".

in this episode I talk about what led to the writing of KORA K and I read the first four scenes from it. KORA K is the story of a self and the space between truth and fiction. Or the story of a translator.

wherein I read Pinsky's Song on Porcelain essay from January 30, 2025.

in this episode I read "Bodies Will Swing" by Jeff Sharlet originally written on his substack blog Scenes from a Slow Civil War on February 15, 2025.

in this episode I read, in part (with a digression mid-way on Dickens' A Christmas Carol and more), the transcript of Unlimited Liabilities (July 31, 2023) with Nate Holdren from the Death Panel podcast co-hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. This episode is not meant to mimic their podcast but is a dramatic interpretation - my reading of the transcript itself - as experiment in performance.

in this episode I begin with a chat about the new year 2025, some thoughts on burnout culture in theatre, and then read Nate Holdren's new blog piece "It's the stupidity, stupid! (The economy does in fact suck).

in this episode the rest of the play with songs THRUSH is read by its author Caridad Svich.

the play originally premiered in 2006 at Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, Texas.

it is part of the trilogy of Land and Country Plays by Svich which include FUGITIVE PIECES (retitled on film as FUGITVE DREAMS) and RIFT.

In this episode I read from scenes 1-12 of my play with songs THRUSH, which was originally produced at Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, Texas in 2006.

THRUSH: Scenes from war and after. Slaughter songs for broken times. A love story and vaudeville of the far and near country. A young woman walks the fields. A young man trails her. The ghost songs of the fallen rise in ballads, hymns, blues and swing as if torn from the roots of mad sorrow.

Content warning: the play deals with themes and images of war crimes against humanity in poetic and abstract terms.

in this episode I read author Gary Indiana's essay on artist Barbara Kruger "The War at Home" from his collection of essays UTOPIA'S DEBRIS (2008) published by Basic Books.

in this episode I read Gabriel Winant's "The Baby and the Bathwater: Class Analysis and Class Formation after Deindustrialization" published online on October 1, 2024 in Historical Materialism. brill.com/hima

in this episode I read prose piece Watches by Jeff McMahon, originally published in the Table Talk from The The Threepenny Review in 2015.

in this episode I read So Mayer's piece "gunge," which was originally posted July 25, 2024.

"The Orange and the Brick" an essay by Caridad Svich.

featured in The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance edited by Noe Montez and Olga Sanchez Saltveit. Published 2024.

reading CJ THE X's WHAT IS TO BE DONE? A Manifesto to Return to Web 1.5, first posted on their website on March 1, 2024. https://www.cjthex.com/what-is-to-be-done/

continuing my recording of work of artists I admire.

in memory of scholar, poet, playwright, theatre-maker, director Kit Danowski, who passed away the week of July 29, 2024 (announced on July 31, 2024 on social media), a reading of their MANIFESTO: THEATRE FOR THE DEAD, published in Global Performance Studies, vol.3, no. 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv3n2a9