This year, today, October 2 - 4, PRELUDE, the festival dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater and performance, celebrates its 10th anniversary. As always, PRELUDE.13 is sure to draw overflow crowds to the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where an array of artists working in theatrical, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance will offer in-process presentations, open rehearsals, and discussions-all for free.
PRELUDE offers a unique opportunity to survey the current New York moment in the field, and to witness extraordinary artistic process-for audiences as well as industry insiders. PRELUDE.13, subtitled FORWARD, will be a place to discover the voices, ideas, and debates that are colliding to shape the future of contemporary theater and performance in NYC. In celebration of the festival's first decade, PRELUDE.13 will also recognize and reflect on the community of artists, audience, scholars, and other participants who have contributed to a decade of discourse. This year's curator, Caleb Hammons (Associate Producer, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College), in collaboration with Frank Hentschker (Executive Director,
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center), invites audiences to join this community again or for the first time, to observe, engage, commune and critique.
Confirmed artists include 600 Highwaymen, Animals, Cesar Alvarez &
Sarah Benson, Big Art Group, Big Dance Theater,
Katherine Brook, Elastic City, Woodshed Collective,
Daniel Fish,
Cynthia Hopkins, Taylor Mac,
James Monaco & Jerome Ellis, Andrew Ondrejcak and PearlDamour. Many more artists, and a schedule of events, will be announced in September.
Events will occur daily from 4pm - 9pm, organized by the following platforms:
• The Evolutionary Fixtures: featuring the work of theater and performance artists whose practices have contributed to and shaped the discourse and history of the past decade. How are these artists thinking about and responding to the challenges and promises of the next ten years?
• The Deviant Charges: featuring the work of theater and performance artists who are forging the narrative of the next generation of practice. How are these artists concurrently in conversation with their lineages while simultaneously provoking new ideas and awareness?
• The Willing Participant: artists whose works engage the spectator in a collision of liveness, participation, place, and the civic nature of performance. In the decade ahead, how can we contemporaneously re-imagine the notions of spectator and participant, event and community?
Most presentations will be held in the Elebash Hall and the Segal Theatre at CUNY Graduate Center, located at 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street). Off-site events will be announced in September with the full schedule. A Closing Night Party and Anniversary Celebration will be held on Friday, October 4 October, at a location TBD. All programs are subject to change.
The
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) is a non-profit center for theatre and performance affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. The Center's mission is to bridge the gap between academia and the professional performing arts communities both within the United States and internationally. By providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts, MESTC is a home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers from the local and inter
National Theatre communities. Through diverse programming - staged readings, theatre events, panel discussions, lectures, conferences, film screenings, dance - and a number of publications, MESTC enables artists, academics, visiting scholars and performing arts professionals to participate actively in the advancement and appreciation of the entire range of theatrical experience. The Center presents staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, lecture series, televised seminars featuring professional and academic luminaries, and arts in education programs, and maintains its long-standing visiting scholars from abroad program. In addition, the Center publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as books, including plays in translation, written, translated and edited by leading scholars.
The Graduate Center, CUNY, of which the
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is an integral part, defines the standard of contemporary graduate education: rigorous academic training and globally significant research. It is recognized for outstanding scholarship across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and is integral to the intellectual and cultural vitality of New York City. Through its extensive public programs, the Graduate Center hosts a wide range of events - lectures, conferences, book discussions, art exhibits, concerts, and dance and theatre - that enrich and inform.
For the most up-to-date information, visit
www.PRELUDEnyc.org.
