Domino Park Will Launch New Performing Arts Series SUGAR, SUGAR!

Domino Park has announced the inaugural edition of Sugar, Sugar!-a free outdoor performing arts series. Taking place over the course of a month from June 4-28, 2025, Sugar, Sugar! marks the first ambitious cultural program at Domino Square, the latest addition to Domino Park's 5-acre public park overlooking the East River. The program will showcase experimental performances spanning theater, dance, music, and puppetry, with featured artists including: Troy Anthony & The Fire Ensemble; National Sawdust Presents Isaiah Barr, David Frazier Jr. and William Parker plus Special Guests; Lena Engelstein & Lisa Fagan; Nile Harris; Poncili Creación; Eli Nixon; Evan Silver aka Tiresias; and a two-night closing performance of the immersive production QUINCE.

Organized by Public Assembly, a Brooklyn-based creative strategy and producing practice, partnering with curator, director, and creative producer Ellpetha Tsivicos--whose production company One Whale's Tale is known for creating maximalist, multidisciplinary performances-Sugar, Sugar! takes place at Domino Square's multipurpose amphitheater and celebrates the legacy of North Brooklyn and New York's creative community more broadly, highlighting artists, collectives, and institutions. Annabel Thompson, Co-founder of Public Assembly, comments: "Sugar, Sugar! is a small offering to the city's already rich landscape of outdoor programming and we are thrilled to invite artistic experimentation that reflects and responds to this site of Williamsburg's waterfront."

Independent guest curators, experimental organizations and companies in North Brooklyn are collaborating with Sugar, Sugar! to guest curate a selection of performances. For example, Theresa Buchheister, the former Artistic Director of The Brick Theater-a Williamsburg-based non-profit dedicated to developing and presenting the work of pioneering emerging artists that pushes boundaries of the ever-evolving spectrum of performing arts-has curated a series of performances by downtown fixtures Nile Harris and Lisa Fagan & Lena Engelstein. National Sawdust, which supports artists who are passionate about experimentation and innovation rooted in sound, will present a performance by experimental jazz musicians Isaiah Barr, David Frazier Jr. and William Parker plus Special Guests. Sasha Okshteyn, a longtime producer at Performa and The Watermill Center, will curate a new group work by Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener featuring music by Charmaine Lee, as well as a time capsule of Agora, Noémie Lafrance's legendary site-specific dance performance staged in the then derelict McCarren Park Pool in 2005, which will be screened each night throughout the duration of the series. On Juneteenth, The Fire Ensemble, an intergenerational choir community, will present The Revival: It Is Our Duty, a celebration meant to uplift people using nonreligious songs and rituals that center collective liberation.

Further highlights include Eli Nixon's DIY Primordial Futurism: An flamboyant invitation to celebrate horseshoe crabs and deep time, which invites audiences to collaborate through naturedrag, comics drawing, fabric handling and singing "crabaoke." Poncili Creación will debut a new performance in their signature style, transforming salvaged materials into vibrant puppetry as an energetic celebration of life; while Evan Silver aka Tiresias will present a drag performance that augments the body with puppetry contraptions to create surreal and vivid visuals.

The closing performance, QUINCE by One Whale's Tale, blends a theatrical narrative with the cultural celebration for which it is named, a Quinceañera. The piece is a comedy with soul about a Chicano household navigating how queerness can both contradict and fit within their religious beliefs, and unwavering commitment to family. This playful and profound examination of our connection to tradition has gone from a COVID era performance in a community garden, to the Bushwick Starr and Lincoln Center. Drinks, dancing, food, and live music at banquet tables carries the audience through this beautiful immersive experience.

Ellpetha Tsivicos, Co-Curator and Creative Producer of Sugar, Sugar! comments: "QUINCE is a celebration of cultural traditions and the ability of those traditions to evolve to be inclusive of future generations. The loss of the 'third space,' the increased defunding of the arts and the desperate need for strength and community is what inspires me most about the new Domino Park Amphitheater. Being able to bring live art at this capacity to the community reaffirms my belief in the ability of art to make change, herald joy and bring people together."