William Missouri Downs

For thousands of years, people believed that an unseen, higher power directed all growth and change—a rational or spiritual force that gave existence a final cause, an ultimate end in mind. It was assumed to be omniscient. In that view, nothing existed in vain. The universe was purposeful, and that sense of purpose justified humanity’s search for fixed truths—truths grounded less in physics than in metaphysics, truths that encouraged meditation, moral reasoning, and speculati

“The death of art,” someone once said, “would not be the end of beauty. It would be the end of the human capacity to recognize it.” But I...

When the modern world came barging in, upending every familiar thing, I thought we would be safe—Surely, I believed, technology could...

It used to be that when someone couldn’t cut it in the competitive or creative world, they’d simply drop out or start drinking. These...

Theatre Antoine, Paris This morning, I found myself again reading the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin  (1835), the novel by Théophile...

Cádiz reminds me of Miami. Then again, so much of the world now feels like a déjà vu of someplace else. Art echoes other art. People...

Today, I would like us all to remember the infamous Humanist riots of 2019—a sweeping wave of blood-soaked outrage that many claimed made...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer I’ve been thinking about a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer of late. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, was...

I’ve been grappling with a difficult question: how do we live, think, and create in this neofascist age? The parallels to early 1930s...

It’s the year 3025. Eight hundred years ago, a comet struck the Earth, triggering a new ice age. Only a sliver of humanity survived,...

“So what? Who cares?” said the apathetic sophomore linebacker slouched in the back of my Intro to Theatre class. “The Nazis who took Anne...

Theatre is just an expensive bureaucracy wrapped in nostalgia. Sure, it’s live, but that’s about all it’s got left—a flickering candle in...

America is experiencing an unorganized revolution—an eruption of desperation manifesting in sporadic acts of violence. The individuals...

Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman  is fiercely devoted to his identity. Today, identity isn’t just important; it’s sacred. Questioning...

I cleaned up my television. As I did, I asked myself if I had ever actually used this $17.99 distraction app. Flipping through the...

An ad for the Colorado New Play Summit showing audience members asleep!   Effective therapy doesn’t transform the patient; it only...

A few years ago in Krakow, Poland, I went to confession. You might see a couple of problems with this: (A) I’m not Catholic. (B) I have...

Right now, I’m enduring the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet—a smorgasbord of culinary crimes. The eggs taste like embalming fluid....

We now inhabit what I call the post-absurdist age —a time when the line between parody and reality has dissolved so completely that...

The problem isn’t Trump. Voting him out or impeaching him won’t change this country because the real issue is the American people. They...