Welcome to Knowledge Workings Theater. Below is our blog giving updates on our work, the art of self-producing, and the theater world at large. Check out our book on self-producing, 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing and stay tuned for our new projects. – KWT
Lucky to have this pair making theater live in the UK premiere of RETROSPECTIVE
Here’s what our Jasmine Dorothy Haefner(Z) & Benjamin Parsons(Clint Belinsky) said
How lucky are we to have in the cast for our upcoming UK production of RETROSPECTIVE, friends and colleagues, old and new, who want to make theatre live. Jasmine Dorothy Haefner who plays Z, an acerbic critic, in this magical mystery tour of a comedy first worked with KWT in 2020. Here’s why Jasmine makes theatre:
Why make theatre? Because it’s fun!
We only met Benjamin Parsons at casting for this production, and yet already feel we have gained a stalwart companion and kindred spirit as he becomes Clint Belinsky, the rogue painter and laid-back lover in RETROSPECTIVE’s ‘menage a quatre‘. Here’s his thoughtful take on why making theatre matters to him:
Benji like many of us in theatre is there for the storytelling
In our previous post featuring the other half of this quirky quartet, Noah Huntley and Sarah Pearcy, we shared how the pandemic’s shuttering of theaters stirred our commitment at Knowledge Workings Theater company to #maketheatrelive. We needed that rush of creation and power of performance even if the work went into pixels before it got to people. Felicitously, many theatre artists joined that cause first in our Zoom productions Grudges in that crazy Spring of 2020 followed that autumn by Within The Context Of No Context by George W S Trow, and the Swedish screwball comedy, Keeping Right.
Happily and gratefully, thanks to a co-production with the pioneering and innovative Broom Street Theater in Madison WI in November 2021, we got back to making theater on an actual stage with our third play, Genealogy before a live, laughing, sighing, and physically present right before us audience . This ‘making’ then continued through our Off-Broadway productions of The Oracle (2022) at THEATRE FOR THE NEW CITY, The Jester’s Wife (2023) at The Chain Theatre, HONOR (2024) at Gene Frankel Theatre, and now Retrospective, which debuted at the Broadway Bound Theatre festival at the AMT Theatre on West 45th St. in Manhattan August 2025.
Now UK theater lovers can enjoy Jasmine and Benji along with Sarah and Noah in the shadowy bantering world of RETROSPECTIVE at Barons Court Theatre May 14-23 by clicking on the button below
Want to know more about the comedy that New York critics called “ more complicated and more multidirectional than one first assumes“? Click here for deets and treats
Here’s what our Noah Huntley(RORY McGRORY) & Sarah Louise Pearcy (PIPPA) said:
March 12th, 2020.
Do you remember where you were on that date? On March the 12th, 2020, my co-playwright, Joe Queenan, and I were set to audition actors for the staging of our second co-written play, Grudges. That’s the day the pandemic hit the fan in the USA with the NBA canceling its season, ERs overflowing, and travel of pretty much any kind cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. Theater also just stopped. Around the country, whether in Broadway palaces or school gyms, regional playhouses or East Village cabarets, theater just stopped. Every plan for a stage performance died.
Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Tom Stoppard
But along with a few others, our then still relatively new company, Knowledge Workings Theater, refused to give up the creation and unfolding of those moments that encompass actor and audience, that give life to the text of a playwright, the scheme of a director, the arts of scenic, lighting, and sound designers. What distinguishes theater is that process and product are about making something live in a way that can simultaneously resemble our lives and show us another world. That four-letter word — live — can be an action verb or a descriptive adjective; both signifying In theater the vivifying reality of stage performance. So hatched our tagline #maketheaterlive. And that’s why we asked our four fabulous actors in the UK premiere of our latest play Retrospective at Barons Court Theatre May 14th – May 23rd to share why they are passionate about making theater live. Noah Huntley and Sarah Louise Pearcy offered the first installment of those answers above.
Our making theater live in those dark days started in a compromise: the actors and performance were live, but the audience was spread somewhat to our surprise not only across North America but in Europe and Asia as well via Zoom. That’s the way in which we produced Grudges (which was our first time working with Jasmine Dorothy Haefner who plays Z in our upcoming UK production of RETROSPECTIVE—her third performance with KWT) followed by Within The Context Of No Context by George W S Trow, and the Swedish screwball comedy, Keeping Right. And through the generosity of these audiences to a GoFundMe, our actors got paid, which we think made them perhaps the best paid stage performers at that moment. Of course, that status derived from being were just about the ONLY stage performers due to the COVID restrictions, but a credit is a credit, right?
Here’s a thirty second promo for those Zoom showings featuring my friends and fine actors John Blaylock and Lynne Otis.
And then in 2021, we got to actually make theater live again through the gracious coproduction of our third play, Genealogy, at Broom Street Theater in Madison WI. Because that’s what’s important about theater: it’s live. You have to remember the lines right then. The lights have to go up at the right time and the sound effects have to go off at the right time. And the audience is right there. Happily for us at KWT, this ‘making’ continued through our productions of The Oracle (2022), The Jester’s Wife (2023), HONOR (2024), and now Retrospective, which debuted at the Broadway bound theater festival at the AMT Theatre on West 45th St. in Manhattan August 2025
Other arts amaze, but theater is the one where you are least likely to know what’s going to happen. Oh, yes, there is a script, a text that the playwrights created and the director has formed a production on that foundation. But every night the connection between the actors and the audience can differ. They have to make theater live every time. No phoning it in, no running it back. Every night is new.
The Irish critic Fintan O’Toole put it very well during COVID:
“Live performers …make their own decisions, here and now, in this moment. In a filmed performance, the performer loses that power. It belongs to others – the director, the editor. But this also applies to us as members of the audience. At a live event, we choose where we look and how we listen. In a virtual event, other people are – sometimes heavy-handedly, sometimes subtly – making those choices for us. This is what we miss about live performance: the autonomy and integrity of the performer, our freedom to shape our own responses, the sense of our shared presence in space and time.”
Shared presence and shared passion: that’s what Sarah and Noah note in their statements above about the importance of making theater live in their own lives. We hope to share that experience with as many theater goers as possible during Retrospective’s run May 14-23 in London. Please join us. Tix at this link.
Some somebodies are about to #maketheaterlive at Barons Court Theatre
Nine years ago, this community embraced me for the last time as their colleague and so-called leader. (Anyone who knows this group realizes that they often did the leading) For 17 years, the energy, intelligence, and compassion of these people — and many not pictured — not only made positive differences in that organization but formed the most satisfying experience of my ‘straight job’ years. I was so darn lucky. Sadly, some of these folks are gone. Happily, many are making a difference in new communities. Blessedly, more than a few in their ‘post straight job’ days now can follow paths to creativity and satisfaction in other ways. Here’s wishing good times, good luck, and good health to those of us still making things happen each in our own way.
What Off-Broadway Should Be & What Many of Us Need
TORA NOGAMI ALEXANDER, MORGAN MORSE, and DAVID M. LUTKEN picking up our spirits in this theatre
Blessings upon Charles Isherwood and the Wall Street Journal for recognizing a paragon of compelling and entertaining theater over on 30th Street at Urban Stages: The Porch on Windy Hill. I missed the first run of this production last year, but determined to catch it this time around even before that glowing review in the WSJ appeared. Commendations to Frances Hill for bringing it back to New York and recommendations to all the powers that be including those of us who make up OOB audiences to keep TPOWH up on stage by going and getting others to go to the show.
MORGAN MORSE and TORA NOGAMI ALEXANDER unleashing talents that blew me away
Why? Because this is a work that refreshes the age-old tale of reconciliation between generations with superb acting and astonishing musical virtuosity. Everything about this production sparkled from the direction by Sherry Stregack Lutken to the writing by a quartet that includes her, two of the current performers, Morgan Morse and David M Lutken, and Lisa Helmi Johansson. I was particularly impressed with the technical aspects of the show overseen on a daily basis by production stage manager Leigh Selting and superbly conceived by Andrew Robinson, Grace Geo, Sun Hee Kil, and John Salutz for respectively scenic, costume, sound and lighting design.
Terrence Rattigan, a damn fine playwright once cautioned that, “A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.” Well, that commandment doesn’t just apply to the writer; everyone involved in the production must muster and then maintain the magic. That’s part of what stoked my enthusiasm for this piece: the rollicking rhythms of the Bluegrass music weave with actors showing us the complications of family stories in such a way that we cannot help but stay fixed to what unfolds before us. The astonishing artistry of actors and musicians TORA NOGAMI ALEXANDER, DAVID M. LUTKEN, and MORGAN MORSE takes us there.
But I now see a paradox in that good advice: the most compelling theater IS that in which there is the ’keyhole into a world that we have never seen’, but that play can simultaneously provide entry into a dynamic that we recognize — such as how families fudge it up with words said and unsaid, realities denied and diverted. That’s true with The Porch On Windy Hill. Go see and listen and laugh and learn for yourself. Let’s get so many people in there that it can’t close on February 22nd. New York needs a good long run of such fine work.
RETROSPECTIVE: The question puzzling famous painter, Rory McGrory, in this new comedy is ‘Asleep or Afterlife? Rory, who may or may not be dreaming, encounters his first wife and two other frenemies from his past amidst a show of his work. This mischievous menage claim they just want to help him get to next while he just wants to wake up. Which will it be?
Make theatre live means making opportunities for creation, contemplation, and yes, comedy. Doing this work across national boundaries proves that there is a constituency that wants to bring people together for enlightenment and entertainment, to as playwright Marsha Norman once wrote, “provide a keyhole into some world that nobody has ever seen.” We want to produce what critic Hilton Als called “…a refraction of reality, containing feelings and thoughts that are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, an atmosphere of verisimilitude.” And while we do that we think people should laugh because we heed the aphorism attributed to George Bernard Shaw that“If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh …
That’s why Retrospective at the Barons Court Theatre marks the UK premiere of the play that had its world premiere at the 2025 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival in New York. How did this happen? It’s an international collaboration:
Mon Sans Productions is run by its artistic director Liviu Monsted. Since Mon Sans is dedicated to producing original works with compelling themes and unique narratives, they decided to celebrate their 2026 London residency with an American play that asks the universal question of what happens…next? Mon Sans, an incubator for creatives looking to make their first or returning steps to theatre, will be bringing the work of playwright, T.J. Elliott, to UK audiences for the first time.
Knowledge Workings Theatre Company is a family-run, Off-Broadway, independent production company dedicated to creating provocative, thoughtful new works that question how we learn, grow, and remember. With a commitment to intimate storytelling and collaborative development, the company champions work that challenges assumptions and ignites conversation. But the person who brouight together Liviu and T.J. with their respective conmanies for this venture is…
Leo Bacica of Barons Court Theatre true to the spirit that brought his group the COMMENDATION FOR SERVICES TO NEW WRITING 2024 connected director and playwright. Zoom calls that run respectively at 8AM, 1PM, and Midnight allowed the trio to find common cause resulting in this project and continuing Barons Court Theatre’s focus on supporting artists who have come to the industry in non-traditional ways and who have limited networks in the UK.
Get your tickets now at this link for one of eight performances only starting May 14th
Our excellent artwork above by Sarah Lewis Smith heralds our upcoming London run
Yep, it’s happening: get thee to Merrie Old England during the lusty month of May to see this new production. Mon Sans Productions in collaboration with Knowledge Workings Theater will produce the UK premiere of Retrospective by T.J. Elliott at Barons Court Theater in London opening May 14th and running for eight performances. Liviu Monsted of Mon Sans will direct this comedy about a famous painter — who may or may not be dreaming — encountering his first wife and other haunting figures from his past amidst what they claim is a retrospective of his work. This mischievous ménage swear they just want to help him ’get to next’ but he just wants to wake up. Further information and tickets available at the Barons Court website
Started our series Chasing the Dead: Amateur Adventures in Genealogy. That motive has hovered over me for many years now and Halloween/All Saints Day this year (or Samhain as the Celts celebrated the event) seemed a good time to start publishing in pieces my new book Chasing The Dead. After all, any method — shy of Ouija boards and seances — that gets me closer to that connection of my family that is gone suits me.
This journey started for me fifteen years ago, when my eldest brother John marshaled three of his siblings — Jim, Brendan, and myself — to undertake a genealogical mission to Ireland. Two years later in August of 2012 while recovering from cancer, I drafted Chasing, a digressive account of that trip that yielded discovery of aspects of my own personality, my relationship to my family and its past along with John’s ancestry artifact targets: a baptismal record here, a ruined ancestral cottage there, the bridge our mother walked to convent school.
And we made it onto Jimmy Kimmel in early October 2025 with our war reporting from the front lines in Portland: here’s the full uncensored footage
In this piece on bureaucracy , I note that given my work in theatre, which many of you have indulged by actually coming to these performances and as my mother would’ve said there’s a special place in heaven for all of you — not that you will all be in the same special place because that would be kind of crowded but you will each have your own special place), my time writing should be spent on plays, but I just could not shake the compulsion to point out the insanity of what is currently festering in our federal government. I’m not one of those guys who is trying to get people to pay to subscribe to my Substack or whatever. In this case, however, I would like to get as many people as possible to read this essay. If subsequently they can point out where I’m wrong (or maybe a really terrible typo), that’s always a good thing for me: not done learning yet. But if I’m right, then the essay might convince people of the need for active resistance immediately to the musking of our government. That’s why I’m going to encourage my friends to at least take a look and then if the piece doesn’t drop them into a coma, I hope they suggest to others that they take a look at this piece. (It’s like a literary Ponzi scheme except nobody gets any money.)
I think you would enjoy clicking on the link. And then reading the essay. I mean who doesn’t like an essay of over 3000 words that references Sigmund Freud, Hammurabi, Hannah Arendt, Dire Straits, and Robert Frost?
Thank you for reading this far. I close with the central philosophical statement of my late brother Mike Elliott, “F**k ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
Luck is the residue of design as Branch Rickey wisely opined. And our co-founder, T.J. Elliott, had the good luck to plan his visit to Portland to be at the opening of Claire Elliott’s show at One Grand gallery of her paintings AND his grandson’s magnificent Paw Patrol themed fifth birthday party just as POTUS designated that city to be a ‘hellhole’ in need of military intervention. His journalistic work ended up on the Jimmy Kimmel show — go to 7:07 at this link — and garnered 54,000 views on YouTube. Knowledge Workings is proud of this daring reporting by such an old man.
