New Work
Mad River believes in supporting the development of new works of theater and music. Notable productions that we have helped produce as of late include The Language of Dolls, We Were There: US Women in Vietnam, a community performance of Terry Riley’s 'In C’, No Visas: A Hip-Hop Journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem to Yellow Springs, the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra, Moira Smiley and the Rhizome Quartet, TRAD ROMP WKND, The Sound of Black Music and many more.
The Yellow Springs Speaker Series
Mad River Theater Works is grateful to the Ohio Arts Council’s Arts Next grant for supporting this program that brings interdisciplinary thought leaders to the village of Yellow Springs to present meaningful and stimulating lectures exploring the intersections of arts, humanities and global affairs. The Yellow Springs Speaker Series is also being supported by the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and the Yellow Springs Library Association. Books for author signings will generally be available on site. For a complete listing of Speaker Series events visit the Antioch College Foundry Theater Website.
Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Hanif’s newest release, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) is a poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home.
Ross Gay
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023
Janan Alexandra
In her debut poetry collection, COME FROM, janan alexandra weaves from English into Arabic, exploring the joint projects of longing and belonging.
Part love song for the speaker’s mother, part grief song for ongoing postcolonial loss, this book reaches for, around, underneath, and through language—feeling for its limits and possibilities. Drawing on both narrative and lyric impulses, alexandra invites readers into a world bristling with family, memory, home, and inheritance—all in the wake of dislocation and fracture. In one section of the book, we follow the speaker “back home” after years of separation; later, we encounter a series of parables in the form of an Arabic abecedarian, through which the speaker recovers parts of her mother tongue.
Dr. William Lopez
Dr. William Lopez is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Faculty Associate in the Latina/o Studies Program. He is the author of Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, a follow-up to his award-winning first book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. In addition to his academic research on the public health impacts of deportation, Dr. Lopez regularly contributes to the public discussions on deportation, diversity, and Latino culture in venues such as the Washington Post, CNN, San Antonio Express News, Detroit Free Press, and Truthout.
Jose Antonio Vargas
Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated theatrical producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the non-profit immigrant storytelling organization Define American, twice named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. His best-selling memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published by Harper Collins in 2018. In 2026, the Brooklyn Public Library named it one of the 250 most notable books in U.S. history.
No Visas בלי רשות بدون جواز
A Hip-Hop Journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem to Yellow Springs
NO VISAS brought together five renowned hip-hop artists to perform both individually and collectively, the culminating performance after a multi-month collaborative artistic process. Mad River Theater Works partnered with Neta Weiner and Samira Saraya of Beit System Ali, a cultural educational movement based in Holon, whose activity is based on the belief in the power of artistic action to promote equality and generate socio-political change. After a year of preparation, Neta and Samira’s in-person tour in Ohio was cancelled in August 2025 due to visas not being issued for them by the current administration. This project then pivoted to a remote collaboration with three Ohio hip-hop artists based in Yellow Springs. Through remote meetings sharing inspiration and beats, and discussing what it means to make art in times of political unrest and turmoil, these five artists pushed themselves to create music together that speaks to the realities of life in America, Palestine, and Israel. The video below documents the cultural an artistic collaboration that we facilitated.
A behind the scenes look at the development of this international collaboration, edited by Kevin Lydy.
Global Programming @ The Foundry
Mad River Theater Works is proud to support the vision of the Global Roots Music programming through its production services and leadership. The ensembles represent a new generation of musicians who celebrate and preserve their culture, beauty, and heritage through art. More information on these programs, past and future, can be found on the Antioch College Foundry Theater website.
