Inter Poets Theater is a community organization that provides poets with a platform to write, develop, and stage dramatic and performance-oriented work. We promote the tradition of poets theater—simply meaning theater written by poets—with a lineage that includes Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theatre (circa 1930), Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty (circa 1932), Gertrude Stein (circa 1934), Helen Adam’s The Maidens (est. 1957), New York Poets Theatre (est. 1961), Judson Poets’ Theatre (est. 1961), Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater (est. 1968), Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (circa 1971), Afrikan Poetry Theatre (est. 1976), San Francisco Poets Theater (est. 1979), Kevin Killian’s New Narrative Poets Theater (est. 1988), and Black Poetry Theatre (est. 2007). 

 

Poets theater is customarily presented in the form of staged readings, featuring minimal production values, with participants from the worlds of literature and visual arts. It is designed to be accessible, manageable to organize, fun, and community-building. This kind of theater can happen anywhere, as long as it is a reciprocal project existing among a network or community of poets. We will not limit our output to a single approach, however, as we hope to develop our resources going forward, eventually providing the capacity to present fully produced shows, depending on the needs of future projects. 

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We plan to produce new work and revivals on an ongoing basis. We are currently looking for volunteers to become involved on all levels: as writers, directors, actors, musicians, choreographers, producers, technicians, administrators, and more. Inter Poets Theater is a politically leftist organization headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.