@thinaar
Theater person, civic action person, Lecturer at Princeton person, person person. Writing in journals and on stages and in a book (The City We Make Together). Progenitor of Perfect City - toolkit for local power using art.
I asked my friend C in Minneapolis how to support people there. She said: organize your block, your building, get your people together and get ready. If you want to know more, please find me.
open.substack.com/pub/thinaar/...
Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.
This is a powerful, loving, heartbreaking statement from the wife of Renee Macklin Good, who was murdered by our government. It amazingly seeks to rise above the hate to honor Renee and calls us to our best selves. Read and share. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
Have you seen Instrument? Is this a still from that? It's spectacular. It led my son to call a friend of his and form a band immediately. www.criterionchannel.com/instrument
New release! “Life Beyond Line Items”
To get the city we deserve, New Yorkers must be active participants in its governance. In conversation, Celina Su and @thinaar.bsky.social ask: How can we build democratic muscle and demand moral budgets?
urbanomnibus.net/2025/11/life...
Planning on choreographing a new TikTok performance called "Jump to Recipe", where we play songs whose choruses contain the word "Jump" and we read recipes aloud while people jump up and down and try to make the recipe. Seeing this as a big entrepreneurial adventure.
open.substack.com/pub/thinaar/...
“So much of what comes through the small screens on our devices is reductive and horrifying. Performance and politics are two sites where we can feel and be critical at the same time. Can sense devotion and lament it’s not toward something more freeing."
Senate democratic leadership voting for the Charlie Kirk memorial holiday whatver-the-fuck are an indicator of how much we can't rely on either party to get us through. We keep us free.
We’d be in a much stronger position right now if mainstream Democrats had taken a common sense stand for First Amendment principles instead of piling on undergraduate standing up for Palestine.
If you really want to stand with working people please endorse Zohran Mamdani for Mayor. Remember, Dan: Vote Blue No Matter Who!
Two pieces in one single week!
Come see NIGHT KEEPER at Mabou Mines on June 23 (and pick up a record!)
See a draft of my epic game-based thingy, All the Time in the World on June 26 up at @ps21.bsky.social as part of Catch!
open.substack.com/pub/thinaar/...
Fully on board with dems running for office promising to reinstate fired federal employees and jail this administration’s various criminals, but let’s go ahead and add “we will seize by eminent domain any national parkland sold to developers”
urbanomnibus.net/2025/04/this...
New release! “This Is a Rehearsal”
With democratic institutions and processes at a nadir, the playwright Aaron Landsman (@thinaar.bsky.social) considers the public meeting's mise-en-scene. How might artists help perform power when we are out of practice?
Thanks to Urban Omnibus for the patience to make a long and grappling piece about performance, power, civic meetings and the search for the right tools to meet the moment: urbanomnibus.net/2025/04/this...
Shout outs to Katy Rubin, Antanas Mockus, NYCHA tenants and other civic performers.
I asked the one high ranking policeman I saw on 5th Ave why there were so few police. He said “We did not expect anything like this. Don’t tell anyone but I’ve only got 44 officers out here — and it’s a great crowd, great event, no incidents.”
US liberals kept promoting ethnonationalism in Israel and then got ousted from power by ethnonationalists at home. maybe they need to examine that
For decades, the Democratic party has traded away its credibility as a stronghold for working-class people nation-wide. To recover, we need to rapidly – and entirely – divorce our party from the ultra-rich and their corporations.
The beauty of "Night Keeper" lies in its ability to capture the feeling of sleeplessness without forcing it...it’s a perfect soundtrack for those late-night hours when the world outside feels distant, and all you have is your thoughts, the shadows, and the sound.
www.chaindlk.com/reviews/12472
New Yorkers: Call Sen. Gillibrand’s office to vote NO on cloture and NO on the Republican Spending Bill.
They vote in the morning.
☎️: (202) 224-4451
A federal court in California has ordered the reinstatement of thousands of fired probationary federal workers
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Curious how the ADL is going to spin Grump calling Schumer Palestinian.
You can now pre-order Night Keeper (the LP and digital download) from @hallowground.bsky.social.
In collaboration with Norman Westberg, a studio reinterpretation of my show about insomnia as a communion in the city.
hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/aaron-...
Click the link to listen to a taste.
if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.
Mahmoud Khalil's rights should be defended for their own sake, and for his unborn child's sake, but they should also be defended on principle and for all of our sakes. The slope is slippery; the rights are crucial.
Let's be really really clear. The Trump admin chose a Palestinian activist as the target of its first lawless political detention precisely BECAUSE they believe that will split the opposition.
If you shrug at the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, or worse, cheer it on, you're following Trump's script.
I feel seen. Or I guess heard.
