Discussions | Panelists’ Bios

Performing New York City: How Theater and Performance Can Survive the Next Decade

Wednesday, October 2
7:15-8:15pm | Segal Theatre

Brecht predicted, “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” In consideration of a decade of PRELUDE, we bring together former and present PRELUDE curators for a lively discussion (led by artist David Levine) about the way things could become. These curators, who also live double and even triple lives as scholars, artists, producers, and administrators, will harness the insights they have gathered over the past decade to debate their visions of contemporary New York theatre and performance in the decade to come.

Presented in collaboration with Cultural Capital: The Future of New York’s Creative Economy, a public program of the CUNY Graduate Center, Fall 2013.

Moderator: David Levine

Participants: Sarah Benson, Claire Bishop, Caleb Hammons, Frank Hentschker, Andy Horwitz, Rob Marcato, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, and Helen Shaw.

The Willing Participant

Thursday, October 3
4-5pm | Elebash Recital Hall

Marked by a resurgent artistic interest in social, civic, and community engagement, questions of authorship, accountability, and responsibility are front and center in the discourse of current performance practices. Social and cultural producer Gavin Kroeber leads a conversation with a group of artists who create participatory performance works with social valences, exploring the slippage between theater and the performative act of activism, asking what we gain and lose when art assumes or imitates various forms of civic practice.

Moderator: Gavin Kroeber

Participants: Adam Horowitz, Melanie Joseph, Aaron Landsman, Todd Shalom, and Niegel Smith

RE: (no subject)

Friday, October 4
4:15-5pm | Elebash Recital Hall

The play is not necessarily the thing in this PRELUDE-commissioned experiment/project, aimed at capturing the here-and-now awareness and reason of the contemporary playwright. Starting a couple months ago, these five playwrights began exchanging emails on an extended chain with no structure and no rules; simply an open, frank conversation re: (no subject). The threads that have emerged are as wildly varied as the styles and perspectives of each of the five. PRELUDE curator Caleb Hammons brings these playwrights together to share a portion of their ongoing exchange and to answer this question: “What is ‘forward’?”

Moderator: Caleb Hammons

Participants: Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sibyl Kempson, Max Posner, and Anne Washburn