What do you want to see?
Skene Staff
From the UK to Korea to the past — Helen Garcia-Alton, Tina Torbey, and Nia Banks share the theatre they wish they could see anywhere in the world.
From the UK to Korea to the past — Helen Garcia-Alton, Tina Torbey, and Nia Banks share the theatre they wish they could see anywhere in the world.
Public domain plays for community theatres: proven box office hits, zero royalties. Reliable entertainers that fill seats.
Brandon PT Davis is a scenic designer whose research-driven practice builds spaces that dissolve into story and earn their invisibility.
Actriz y autora mexicana Kelly Key habla sobre maternidad, teatro autodidacta y su cuento Cerillo en este episodio de OFFSTAGE en Español.
Helen Garcia-Alton, Tina Torbey, and Nia Banks share what’s on stage right now that is transformative, interesting, or just plain fun.
In December 2024, I was searching for something I couldn’t name. I found myself staring not into an empty stage, but into a different kind of void. The digital landscape had become exhausting, fragmented, loud, and I decided to take a long break from social media to find clarity in the quiet.
In that silence, something became clear: I needed to build a stage. Not a physical one, but something just as essential. A place where the designer in Mexico City could discover the work of the Director in Dublin. Where the labor behind the magic would be honored, documented, celebrated. Where borders didn’t divide us, and where we could bypass the algorithms that profit from our fragmentation.
That stage would become Skene. But not just yet.
Launching Skene in January 2025 required an unusual kind of faith—the kind you summon when asking people to step onto an empty stage. I had no website, no readers, no followers, no proof beyond a speech and a promise. And the profound belief that this mattered. Skene was a ghost. An idea.
A few extraordinary people saw the vision beyond the incomplete. Emanuele Sinisi shared his design process on our very first PROFILE. Roberto Mosqueda made us feel the pulse of the audience; Joan Quintas took us through a journey without a map; and Zeltzin Vargas brought her fierce and apologetic artistry to our nascent pages.
Many months later, Angélica Martins de Oliveira would reflect: “Being featured on Skene strengthened my visibility and gave me a new level of credibility in my field.” That credibility was forged in those early weeks when, in the absence of a full roster, I spent nights writing In Memoriam pieces for the legendary designers I admired and reviewing award shows—proving to the void that Skene was a place where exceptional work would always be documented.
But you can’t build a stage on vision alone—it takes materials, manpower, and resources. Launching an independent, multilingual platform without institutional backing meant that every brick was laid through the generosity of individuals who believed in the mission before they could see it manifested.
An early donation from Dorothy Holland, PhD didn’t cover our expenses, but it gave me something more valuable: proof that someone believed in this. That small act of faith was the spiritual win I needed to keep building when the easiest thing would have been to walk away. Since then, the platform has been sustained by the “slow and steady” heartbeat of our community: sporadic donations from our Patreon supporters, the kindness shown during our Giving Tuesday campaign, and the invaluable trust of our advertisers.
But the work continues. To keep this platform independent, multilingual, and free, we rely on those who find value here. If Skene has been a resource for you this year, I hope you’ll consider helping us lay the next mile of track by supporting us.
By spring, the voices multiplied. Artists began trusting us with their OPINIONS, their vulnerability, and their hard-earned wisdom. Essays like Creo que sí: Rethinking Success Through Art and Todo en contra: The Theatre that Grows in the Cracks gave Skene its soul. As Mahatma Ordaz would later observe: “Skene is a space where diversity is celebrated and ideas are shared.”
The real curtain-up moment happened at USITT 2025. Walking that conference floor as an Editor for the first time, I felt the hunger for global dialogue rippling through every conversation. Our USITT First-Timer’s Guide, a roadmap for finding your place in this vast conference, became a mirror to my own journey into this new project.
That moment also made abundantly clear our need to reach out to organizations whose mission overlapped ours. Our collaboration with CITT/ICTS, along with the support of USITT and Paracosm Dance (which introduced us to the unfiltered and ferocious artistry of Alyssa Johnson) shaped our connection with the community.
By August, we realized bridging the gap required more than storytelling—it required tools. We launched #TEACH to dismantle the gatekeeping around professional knowledge. Because too many artists are left to figure out the business of their craft alone, in the dark.
From Social Media 101 for Performing Arts to pay-what-you-can workshops like How to Be Your Own Hype Person, we made the backstage of the industry accessible. We believe empowered artists are resilient artists. And resilient artists change the field.
If January was about faith, December was about force.
By year’s end, Skene had crossed 1.47 million total cross-platform views. For a platform that launched with zero inherited subscribers and zero paid advertising, that number still takes my breath away. We earned our audience through artist trust and work worth sharing.
The deeper metrics tell an even richer story. We welcomed nearly 15,000 unique users who didn’t just click and leave. Our average session duration sits at over five minutes. In a world of 15-second scrolls, we’ve captured the community’s sustained attention.
And then there’s Off-Book, the Skene Newsletter. While arts publications typically see open rates between 25-35%, our community shattered those norms with a 59.93% open rate. Every time we send a dispatch, over half of our subscribers stop what they’re doing to read. That’s not just a list—it’s a living, engaged community of professionals, educators, and emerging artists who trust us.
From there, the our offerings kept growing. We launched #SkeneTalks, falling in love with the theatre all over again through our collective stories. We partnered with OISTAT PCC, connecting Skene to the global technical heartbeat., and joined forces with La Gente to amplify the future of Latinx production.
One of the most rewarding moments of 2025 was watching the New Talents series take flight. Seeing the massive response to Matthew Smith: From Margins to Masterpieces proved that the world is hungry for new perspectives. This growth allowed us to expand the team, bringing Maranda DeBusk temporarily into the fold to deepen our collaborative transformation. Together, we launched the first episode of OFFSTAGE, where we finally said out loud what we all whisper in the wings.
We enter this year not as a startup, but as a staple. The proof of concept is behind us.
In January 2026 alone, we generated 103,897 Google Search impressions—a staggering leap from our first month. Our average search position improved from 12 to 6 in a single month. We’re not just a website anymore. We’re a destination people actively seek out.
Our mission for 2026 is to move from documentation to dialogue. We’re scaling partnerships, deepening our commitment to multilingual accessibility, and ensuring that whether you’re in a tech booth in Austin, a rehearsal hall in Guadalajara, or a design studio in Stockholm, Skene can be your global callboard.
We started with a ghost light in an empty stage. Today, there are 1.47 million of you in the seats, and we take a deep breath as we peer through the curtain of our second year, ready to step onto the stage.
Thank you for believing in this show when there wasn’t even a script.
Now places, everyone!
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Off-Book is the Skene newsletter for artists and makers. Profiles, opportunities, and editorials, free. New subscribers also receive the 2026 Performing Arts Survival Guide.
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