Magdalena "Footlights" Rojas-Park

— The 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring did not, in fact, require a pagan sacrifice. But the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées offered one anyway. —

— That time a Parisian chorus line kicked the lid off the magic industry, one high-kick at a time. —

— The strange second life of a lost Mozart opera that accidentally unionized Paris. —

— The time a casting dispute over the role of Hercules led to a sitting senator fielding a private army of very dramatic gladiators. —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— How a Sanskrit Script Scuttled the Raj’s Dignity with a Riot of Rainbows —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— How a Bunch of Fussy Thespians Became Imperial China’s Most Terrifying Spooks —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— How a Lost Shipment of English Neckwear Nearly Decapitated the Ottoman Empire —

— How One Stickler for Rice Paper Purity Unleashed a Theatrical Monster —

— How a troupe of broke Italian actors and one very lewd puppet accidentally kick-started the English Civil War. —

— When the Nigerian Civil War Got a Cast of 700 Angry Ghosts —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— How a Cursed Piece of Wood and Theatrical Levels of Horniness Brought Down Brazil’s Generals —

— How a Bunch of Balinese Puppeteers and Their Little Shadow Friends Gaslit an Entire Planet and Turned Colonialism into a Badly-Reviewed Farce. —

— How an exiled Japanese maskmaker and a bottle of bathtub gin gave the Harlem Renaissance its most glorious trainwreck. —

— How a Chance Gulag Encounter Gave Soviet Theatre a Glorious, Grinding Hard-On —

— How One Noh Troupe Upstaged the Shogunate With Weaponized Eyebrow-Waggling —