Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Keynote: Standing Center Stage: Leadership and the Labor of Justice
9 a.m.–10:30 a.m. EDT
Join Baltimore Center Stage artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb and producing director Ken-Matt Martin in conversation with ATHE president Dr. Martine Kei Green-Rogers. Through conversation and questions, we will explore how theatre artists and leaders make daring, visionary choices in times of uncertainty—and how theatre makers sustain themselves and one another through collective action, community building, and creative resilience.
An advocate for the field of theatre and performance in higher education, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) serves as an intellectual and artistic center for producing new knowledge about theatre and performance-related disciplines, cultivating vital alliances with other scholarly and creative disciplines, linking with professional and community-based theatres, and promoting access and equity.
Whether in-person or virtual, the annual ATHE conference brings together a global community of educators, artists, and administrators over a weekend of intense days of workshops, panel presentations, plenary sessions, social events, and performances. ATHE provides its membership with the latest in theatre and innovation, at the forefront of theatre practice and pedagogy.
howlround.com/happenings/association-theatre-higher-education-athe-conference-2026
Keynote: Standing Center Stage: Leadership and the Labor of Justice
9 a.m.–10:30 a.m. EDT
Join Baltimore Center Stage artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb and producing director Ken-Matt Martin in conversation with ATHE president Dr. Martine Kei Green-Rogers. Through conversation and questions, we will explore how theatre artists and leaders make daring, visionary choices in times of uncertainty—and how theatre makers sustain themselves and one another through collective action, community building, and creative resilience.
An advocate for the field of theatre and performance in higher education, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) serves as an intellectual and artistic center for producing new knowledge about theatre and performance-related disciplines, cultivating vital alliances with other scholarly and creative disciplines, linking with professional and community-based theatres, and promoting access and equity.
Whether in-person or virtual, the annual ATHE conference brings together a global community of educators, artists, and administrators over a weekend of intense days of workshops, panel presentations, plenary sessions, social events, and performances. ATHE provides its membership with the latest in theatre and innovation, at the forefront of theatre practice and pedagogy.
howlround.com/happenings/association-theatre-higher-education-athe-conference-2026
![A Conversation with Gelsey Bell—TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance
TORCHES continues with a conversation with the multidisciplinary performance creator, composer, and vocalist Gelsey Bell. She is a core member of ensembles thingNY and Varispeed.
Gelsey Bell is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary performance creator, composer, and vocalist. Her recent works include the experimental opera mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning] (2023), commissioned by the HERE Arts Center and presented in the Prototype Festival; Cairns (2020), a soundwalk for Green-Wood Cemetery; the musical one-act Archaeopteris (2025), commissioned by Wet Ink; and thingNY’s collaboratively written opera Mouthful (2024). She is the Co-Artistic Director of thingNY and Varispeed. She has released multiple albums, including the recent mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning], Skylighght,and Heads Together. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opera America, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Japan Foundation, NYSCA, and others. Performance highlights also include Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway) and Ghost Quartet, Robert Ashley’s Foreign Experiences and Improvement, Darius Jones’s Samesoul Maker, Alaina Ferris’s The Lydian Gale Parr, Aaron Siegel’s Rainbird, and other works by Jay Afrisando, Kate Soper, Tomomi Adachi, Brent Michael Davids, and others. A Conversation with Gelsey Bell—TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WWYTdtbDNus/mqdefault.jpg)









