Ten Years PRELUDE

PRELUDE
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center

TEN YEARS
“Prelude is something that was cool ten years ago when it started, and is still cool now.
Somehow it just never went downhill.”
-Young Jean Lee

“Prelude is a perfect cultural embodiment of New York City. Always evolving, always exciting,
too crowded, with too much to see in too little time.”
-Vallejo Gantner

“Prelude is like the book I most want to read each fall, with each page full of surprises,
cliff‑hangers and revelations that change my sense of what’s possible in performance.”
-Gideon Lester
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
 Ten Years PRELUDE
Copyright © 2014 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Front cover photo ©2008 by Rachel Roberts
Edited by
Back cover photo ©2007 by Julien Jourdes Frank Hentschker
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in Designed & Design Concept by
any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical Yu Chien Liu
methods, without permission in writting from the publisher and photographers.

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition, 2016

ISBN 978-0-9846160-9-1

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications

The Graduate Center / City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10016-4309
212-817-1860 | [email protected]

thesegalcenter.org
preludenyc.org

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hentschker, Frank, editor. | Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

Title: Ten years Prelude / edited by Frank Hentschker ; designed & design
concept by Yu Chien Liu.
Description: First edition. | New York : Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Publications, 2016. | ?2014. | Presents a history of the Prelude
Festival, held at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center,
City University of New York, from 2003 through 2013. Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050029 | ISBN 9780984616091 (pbk.) Graduate Center / City University of New York
Subjects: LCSH: Prelude (Festival)--History. | Drama festivals--New York
(State)--New York--History--21st century. | Theater--New York (State)--New Frank Hentschker, Executive Director
York--History--21st century. Rebecca Sheahan , Managing Director
Classification: LCC PN2277.N52 M38 2016 | DDC 792.09747/1--dc23 LC record available at https://urldefense. Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications
proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lccn.loc.gov_2015050029&d=CwIF-g&c=8v77JlHZOYsReeOxyYXDU39VUU
zHxyfBUh7fw_ZfBDA&r=r51pc3LFxbZcR3qtPw6WmF7RDa6sXfkKHkowJh6CVI0&m=ijkeOewTOedbN5m7mmb Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications
RBzx8uq-1zBTIVsjPR5NVcus&s=XiGYCVddYwlhJL_TKoAKn70KCiiPljc71vuTucztzMY&e= New York ©2016
 INTRODUCTION
PRELUDE Artists & Panelist 2003 - 2013
2003 Blue Heron Theatre • Bravo Productions • Clubbed Thumb • Epic Repertory Theatre •Hamm & Clov Stage Company • Jean
THE PRELUDE WAY
Cocteau Repertory Theatre • MCC Theater • Metropolitan Playhouse • National Asain American Theatre Company • Salt & Pepper by Frank Hentschker, Founder
Mime Company • Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble • The Geniuses Guild • The Lark Theatre • The Play Company • The
Spartan Theatre • Lisa Stevenson • Jim Horton • Daniel Talbot 2004 Ellen Stewart/La Mama ETC • Abingdon Theatre Company •
American Renaissance Theatre (ARTC) • Banana Boat Productions • Black Moon Theatre Company • Boomerang Theatre Company
• CAP 21 (Collaborative Arts Project 21) • Ergo Theatre Company • Freestyle Repertory Theatre • Golden Fleece, Ltd. • Hamm &
Clov Stage Company • HERE Arts Center • Jean Cocteau Repertory • Juggernaut Theatre Company • Marie-Louise Miller • In Weimar Berlin, theatre maker Bertolt Brecht declared that “New Times need New Forms of theatre.” The
Messenger Theatre Company • Metropolitan Playhouse • Mind The Gap Theatre • NeoPack • Pan Asian Repertory Theatre • Sarah explorer Brecht created a pleasurable, open theatre for the children of the scientific age, a theatre that aimed
Cameron Sunde • Six Figures Theatre Company • Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble • Teatro I.A.T.I. International Theatre Arts
Institute • The Actors Theatre Workshop, Inc. • The Caribbean Cultural Theatre • The Dream Theatre • The Hypothetical Theatre
to educate and to entertain. Brecht’s work for the theatre reacted to the invention of the typewriter, the car,
Company • Thirteenth Night Theatre Company • Xoregos Performing Company • Young Playwrights, Inc 2005 David Cote/Time Out the plane, film projection, the tank, the submarine, the phone, the growing divide between rich and poor, the
New York • Vallejo Gantner/P.S. 122 • Eric Dyer/Radiohole • Paul Lazar/Big Dance Theater • John Jesurun • Marianne Weems/The bitter fights between the left and the right, the threat of fascism, and total war in the first mechanical age.
Builders Association • Big Dance Theater • Caden Manson/Big Art Group • Cynthia Hopkins • Division 13 Productions • Elevator
Repair Service • Erin Courtney • Jay Scheib • John Jesurun • Katie Pearl • Lisa D’Amour • Mac Wellman • Madelyn Kent • Nature
Theater of Oklahoma • Pavol Liska • Richard Maxwell/NYC Players • Sheila Callaghan • The Builders Association • The National
In New York, at the Graduate Center CUNY, almost 100 years later, the research for new forms of theatre
Theater of the United States of America • Todd D’Amour • Young Jean Lee 2006 Andrew Dinwiddie • Brooke O’Harra • Gregory and performance continues at The Segal Center’s PRELUDE; this time for the children of the digital age. How
Mosher • Jeffrey M. Jones • Kristin Marting • Maria Goyanes • Mark Russell • Randy Gener • Risa Shoup • Rob Handel • Young Jean do New York’s theatre artists react to the invention of the iPad, the ever-exploding internet, SKYPE, drones,
Lee • Brendan Connelly/The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf • Brooke O’Harra/The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf • Carl Hancock Rux smart phones, smart watches, home robots, digital cable TV, YouTube, GPS, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a
• Charles Mee, Jr • Collapsable Giraffe • Cynthia Hopkins • Daniel Veronese • Dean Moss • Eric Novak • Elyas Khan • Ex.Pgirl •
Federico León • Jason Grote • Jay Scheib • Jean Graham Jones • Jennifer Morris • Jenny Schwartz • Joyce Cho • Juan Souki • Lola
digitized military? How do writers, directors, and performers reflect on the ever-growing divide between rich
Arias • Mabou Mines • Mallory Catlett /Juggernaut Theatre Co. • Nick Flynn • Rafael Spregelburd • Ruth Margraff • Sarah Provost • and poor, the bitter fights between the liberals and the conservatives, the threat of Climate Change, and the
Shoshana Polanco • Target Margin Theater • TENT • Thomas Bradshaw • Will Eno • Yana Ross 2007 Adam Bock • Alex Timbers • War on Terror in the second mechanical, but first digital age?
Brook Stowe • David Cote • David Henry Hwang • Eric Dyer • James Scruggs • Jason Grote • Jim Nicola • Kristin Marting • Mac
Wellman • Madeleine George • Melanie Joseph • Morgan Jenness • Norman Frisch • Richard Nelson • Sarah Benson • Thomas
Bradshaw • 31 Down • Adam Bock • Andrew Schneider • Annie-B Parson /Big Dance Theater • Aya Ogawa/knife, Inc. • Christina
At the PRELUDE theatre research lab, for three days each fall, we can observe these new aesthetic practices
Campanella • Dan Safer/Witness Relocation • David Levine/CiNE • John Moran • Josh Fox/International WOW Company • Kameron growing, influenced and reacting to what Hegel calls the Weltzustand—the state of the world. Still in process,
Steele/The South Wing • Kristen Kosmas • Laboratory Theater • LightBox • Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental • Mark Schultz • in development, not finished, not polished—but honestly, seriously, playfully asking the eternal questions of
Masataka Matsuda • Mikuni Yanaihara • Rachel Shukert/Bushwick Hotel • Ranbir Sidhu • Stephanie Fleischmann • The Debate what is real and what is not, what is new and what is old, where we come from, where we are, where we are
Society • The Play Company • the TEAM • Toshiki Okada • Uchino Tadashi 2008 Andrew Schneider • Banana Bag & Bodice • Big Art
Group • Big Dance Theater • Bonnie Marranca •Branden Jacobs‑Jenkins • Caden Manson • Cynthia Hedstrom • David Cote • Debra
going, and what we can do to make change we want to happen.
Singer • Eric Dyer • Eric Grode • Eric Ting • George Hunka • Jay Scheib • Jennifer Wright Cook • Joyce Cho • Kim Whitener • Kristin
Marting • Langdon C. Crawford • Mallory Catlett • Marianne Weems • Morgan von Prelle Pecelli • Nello McDaniel • NYC Players • Paul In New York, we have an army of skilled theatrical and performative explorers, educating and entertaining
Lazar • Progress Theater • Przemyslaw Wojcieszek • Richard Foreman • Robert Elmes • RoseLee Goldberg • Sally Oswald • Sophie the digital children of our age. They truly experiment with form and content—like in a physics lab—whatever
Haviland • Susan Feldman • Teresa Vasquez • Vallejo Gantner • Victor Weinstock • Yehuda Duenyas • Zannah Mass • Alex Delinois/
NYC Players • Andrew Schneider/EDP • Bob Feldman/NYC Players • Brian Mendes/NYC Players • Christina Masciotti/NYC Players •
the results may be. And every fall, PRELUDE has been the very best showcase in the city, when it comes to
Fluxconcert • Ivan Talijancic/Wax Factory • Jenny Schwartz •Joyce Cho • Krzysztof Bizio • Lakpa Bhutia / NYC Players • Lear invention, creativity and new ideas. The list of PRELUDE artists and ensembles documented in this book
deBessonet • Malgorzata Sikorska‑Miszczuk •Marcy Arlin • Michal Walczak • Moving Theater • Neal Medlyn • Okwui Okpokwasili • speak for themselves. And it has been a real honor for us to present their work.

An early version of this article was published in PERFORMANCE NEW YORK”, A Journal of Performance and Art,
Peter Von Salis/ Untitled Project • Przemyslaw Wojcieszek • Rafael Sanchez / NYC Players • Raul Vincent Enriquez • Richard
Maxwell / NYC Players •Ruth Sergel/Untitled Project • Sheila Callaghan • Tal Yarden/ Second Life Street Theater • Temporary
Distortion • The Air Band • The Builders Association • The National Theater of The United States of America • The Paper Industry
New York performance as an entity has become an inspiring model on how to reflect best on Hegel’s
2009 Andrew Schneider • Arwen Lowbridge • Bonnie Marranca • Esther Robinson • Harriet Taub • Helene Lesterlin • Jeff Hnilicka • Weltzustand in the new millennium. Hundreds of theatre companies and performance artists present
Jeremy James Pickard •Jonah Bokaer • Justin Krebs • Kristin Marting • Lisa Phillips • Michael Johnson-Chase • Phil Soltanoff / Mad hundreds of openings each month. The works are often not meant to last; they come and go, like pop
Dog Experimental • Robert Zukerman • Sheila Lewandowski • Tairone Bastien • Vallejo Gantner • Wayne Ashley • Yehuda Duenyas • songs. Due to the financial and physical constraints of New York City, new works are produced fast,
Aaron Landsman • Adrienne Truscott • Andrew Dinwiddie • Branden Jacobs-Jenkins • Brian Rogers/The Chocolate Factory •
Brendan Connelly/The Theatre of a Two‑Headed Calf • Brooke O’Harra / The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf • Bruce High Quality
presented early—a vehicle for the future, research for the next work—with emphasis on the journey and not
Foundation • Christina Masciotti/NYC Players • Dan Safer / Witness Relocation • David Levine • David Michalek • Erin Courtney • the arrival at the temple. It is the end of the masterpieces, as Artaud called for; in fact, it calls perhaps for
Hwang Ji Woo • Jay Scheib • John Jesurun • Judith Malina/The Living Theatre • Kim Kwang Lim • Kim Myung Hwa • Kristen Kosmas the end of dominating voices of the masters of theatre, might they be writers, directors, or critics. All is in
• Marina Abramovic • Object Collection • Radiohole • Steve Cuiffo • William Cusick • Wuturi Players 2010 Caridad Svich • Carla flux, in movement, breathless. Work we ultimately see at PS 122 or at BAM, HERE Arts Center or St. Ann’s
Peterson • Christina deRoos • Eric Dyer •Kevin Cunningham • Kevin Doyle • Megan Sprenger • Tanya Selvaratnam • Young Jean Lee
• Aaron Landsman • Alec Duffy/Hoi Polloi • Andrew Schneider • Angels Aymar • Dan Safer • DJ Spooky • Esteve Soler • HERE Art
Warehouse, JACK or The Chocolate Factory in Queens or downtown cannot be more different from each
Center • Hillary Spector • Ishmael Houston-Jones • Jim Findlay • Joe Silovsky • Joyce Cho • Julie Atlas Muz • Kimon Keramidas • other, like blogs on the web. For every strong voice that emerges, other voices will sound that contradicts
Mallory Catlett • Marta Buchaca • Mashinka Firunts • May Adrales • Penny Arcade • Reggie Watts • Reid Farrington • Robert Quillen or questions immediately. But these incompatible approaches help us to organize a new understanding of

Volume 34, Number 1, January 2012 (PAJ 100), Bonnie Marranca, editor.
Camp • Sergi Belbel • Sylvan Oswald/Hoi Polloi • The Field • The TEAM • Trajal Harrell 2011 Claudia La Rocco • Jeffery M. Jones • everything, the Weltzustand, and to learn about the brave new world we all live in. We, the spectators or
Julia Robinson • Pablo Helguera • Richard Move • Sibyl Kempson • Big Dance Theater • Daniel Fish • David Levine/CiNE • Doll Parts •
Donelle Woolford • Elevator Repair Service • Jackie Sibblies Drury • Jackson Pollock Bar • Jake Hooker/The Plastic Arts • Jay Scheib
participants—in art as in life—have to navigate ourselves without the help of dominating voices of the masters.
• Lumberob • Mac Wellman • Nina Beier • Otso Huopaniemi • Robert Fitterman • Sibyl Kempson • Steve Mellor • Suzanne Bocanegra We already know that everyone (like FOX News or a political candidate) who is trying to deliver one truth,
& Paul Lazar • Temporary Distortion • Tina Satter/Half Straddle • Will Holder • Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company 2012 Aaron is deceiving us. Now we have learned that it is up to us, when in doubt, to create the meaning and to do the
Landsman • Andy Horwitz • Caden Manson • Claire Bishop • Lear deBessonet • Marianne Weems • Niegel Smith • Tony Torn • 600 right thing.
Highwaymen • Adam Feldman • Alec Duffy/Hoi Polloi• Amber Martin • Anais Michel • Andrew Ondrejcak • Annie Dorsen • Anne
Washburn • Anonymous Ensemble • Branden Jacobs-Jenkins • Bridget Everett • Caden Manson/Big Art Group • Cole Escola •
Corey Dargel • Corina Copp •Culturebot • Daniel Fish • Dave Malloy • David Levine • DJ Mendel • Eliza Bent • Erin Courtney/ PRELUDE, for over 10 years now, has been a real force in New York theatre, providing a small space for
Adhesive Theater Project • Faye Driscoll • Hannah Bos • Heidi Schreck • Jack Ferver • Jay Scheib & Co. • Jeff Larson • Jenn Harris • artistic exchange in the heart of the city, within the limits of an academic setting, but with unlimited creativity
Joe Ranono • Joshua Conkel • Juliana Francis Kelly • Karinne Keithley • Ken Rus Schmoll • Kristine Haruna Lee • Lance Horne • and imagination. Over 1,000 New York theatre makers have participated and created a discourse where
Leah Nanako Winkler/Everywhere Theater Group • Lucas Hnath • Lumberob • Mac Wellman • Maria Striar • Miguel Gutierrez and
The Powerful People • Molly Pope • Myles Kane • Nature Theater of Oklahoma • Nellie Tinder • Niegel Smith • Phil Soltanoff • Poor
artists interact with academics and audiences; where fellow artist can see what their colleagues are up to
Baby Bree • Richard Foreman • Sarah Benson • Shara Worden • Sibyl Kempson • Tei Blow • The Kioskers • The Wooster Group • and chat over a cup of coffee about fresh ideas. The PRELUDE artists—pioneers in their field—demonstrate
Tina Satter / Half Straddle • Tony Torn • William Burke • Yackez • Yelena Gluzman/Science Project • Young Jean Lee 2013 Aaron that theatre and performance matters in the City, and that New York experimental work is still at the forefront
Landsman • Abigail Browde • Adam Horowitz • Andy Horwitz • Anne Washburn • Annie Baker • Annie Dorsen • Branden of the form.
Jacobs-Jenkins • Carla Peterson • Clyde Valentine • Gavin Kroeber • Gelsey Bell • Geoffrey Jackson Scott • Helen Shaw • Max
Posner • Melanie Joseph • Michael Silverstone • Morgan von Prelle Pecelli • Niegel Smith • Risa Shoup • Rob Marcato • Shonni
Enelow • Sibyl Kempson • David Levine/CiNE • Claire Bishop • 600 Highwaymen • Andrew Ondrejcak • Andrew Schneider • And if that would not be reason enough to celebrate, here is one more: The act of making art, being an
ANIMALS • Big Dance Theater • Built for Collapse • Caden Manson/Big Art Group • Cesar Alvarez • Chris Tyler • Cynthia Hopkins • artist, living the life of a free artist in the highly restricted contemporary American society is a radical,
Daniel Fish • Erin Markey • Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure • James Harrison Monaco • Jay Scheib & Co. • Jeffrey M. Jones artistic provocation in itself. Surviving in New York, just being able to produce and present artwork over a
• Jerome Ellis • Jim Findlay • Katherine Brook/Tele-Violet • Katie Pearl/PearlDamour • Kippy Winston • Kristine Haruna Lee • Lisa
D’Amour/PearlDamour • Mallory Catlett/Restless NYC • Nature Theater of Oklahoma • Neal Medlyn • Niegel Smith • Rebecca Patek
longer period of time is meaningful and highly respected by the audience and fellow artists. And should be
• Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble • Sarah Benson • Taylor Mac • The Assembly • The United States Department of Arts & Culture • celebrated as we do, the PRELUDE way.
Todd Shalom • Woodshed Collective •
-Frank Hentschker
Executive Director, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center CUNY, New York
THE MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER 7
 INTRODUCTION

THE TEN YEAR PRELUDE:

A FORWARD-LOOKING BACKWARD GLANCE
by Jeffrey M. Jones

Ten PRELUDES. Ten snapshots of a coming season. Ten glimpses into the near future of the only kind of What was surprising about PRELUDE.05 — genuinely surprising, and almost inconceivable even ten
theatre that seeks the future. Now I’ve been asked to examine the entrails and say what it all means— years earlier — was the presence of nine experimental American playwrights, representing almost half
where we have been and where we are going, in 2,000 words or less. Reader, I may not be up to it. the programming. Throughout the 20th century, experimental American playwrights came — if they came
at all — as single spies: O’Neill (don’t laugh), Wilder (ditto), Kennedy, Baraka, Fornés, Shepard, Albee
Because, after all, how much really changes over the course of a decade?1 (sometimes), Foreman, Jenkin, Shawn, Wellman, Jesurun, Mee… (surely I’m forgetting someone).

When PRELUDE began, for example, the sitting president was the son of a former president and the
Then, around the turn of the millennium, they show up at battalion strength:
grandson of a US Senator and Wall Street banker, while the mayor of New York was the 85th richest
person in the world. This year, by contrast, the sitting president is the son of Kenyan exchange student Scott Adkins, Jess Barbagallo, Adam Bock, Thomas Bradshaw, William Burke, Sheila Callaghan,
and grandson of an unsuccessful furniture salesman, while Michael Bloomberg, having fiddled with the Robert Quillen Camp, Barbara Cassidy, Alex Collier, Corina Copp, Erin Courtney, Lisa D’Amour,
rules to stay in office, is now the 13th richest person in the world. You could as easily say that everything Jackie Sibblies Drury, Will Eno, Rob Erickson, Sara Farrington, Stephanie Fleischmann, Ben
changes as that nothing ever does. Gassman, Madeleine George, Melissa James Gibson, Elana Greenfield, David Greenspan, Rinne
Groff, Jason Grote, W. David Hancock, Rob Handel, Trish Harnetiaux, Ann Marie Healy, Lucas
Which is equally true of PRELUDE. It is easy enough to find change: consider that when the Nature Hnath, John Jahnke, Julia Jarcho, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Karinne Keithley, Sibyl Kempson,
Theater of Oklahoma2 first surfaced in PRELUDE.05, its extant body of work consisted of a 20-minute Madelyn Kent, Matt Korahais, Kristen Kosmas, Carson Kreitzer, Aaron Landsman, Young Jean
dance piece at an obscure downtown performance series held in a former Kosher winery with a very Lee, Casey Llewellyn, Kirk Lynn, Charlotte Meehan, Kevin Oakes, Andrew Ondrejcak, Sylvan
Oswald, Suzan-Lori Parks, Amber Reed, Kate E. Ryan, Tina Satter, Heidi Schreck, Jenny Schwartz,
leaky roof. Or that Young Jean Lee, also in PRELUDE.05, had only presented her first full-length play the
Normandy Raven Sherwood, Mark Sitko, Peggy Stafford, Ariel Stess, Kelly Stuart, Lucy Thurber,
year before, over two sweltering weeks at the Incubator summer series (and Incubator itself wouldn’t
Alice Tuan, Ken Urban, Anne Washburn, Gary Winter…8
take over the St. Mark’s space for another five years). Or that, in 2005, Anne Washburn was the only
playwright to have been produced by 13P3 . Even PRELUDE itself was different in those early days; there
Something fundamental had changed in the practice of experimental theatre9, and PRELUDE captured it.
were no lines, seats were readily available, and a good part of the audience looked like retirees on a
budget, who after a lifetime of theatergoing had learned to sit equably through anything. 4
To understand how playwrights have transformed the field, consider first how ensembles have
historically made work. While there are certainly actor-driven companies and those devoted mainly to
But it is just as true that the ten years of PRELUDE demonstrate constancy and continuity. Consider that
script interpretation, the default method has been assemblage, bricolage, collage: building pieces out of
the nine ensembles5 in PRELUDE.05 were at least five years old, and some much older — Elevator Repair
smaller, discrete pieces of … stuff10. Text was but one element and rarely expected to carry the burden
Service (1991), The Builders Association (1994), Division 13 Productions (1995), Big Art Group (1999),
of structure, while the prevalence of cheap and reliable audio/video recording devices allowed a layering
New York City Players (1996), Radiohole (1998), Big Dance Theater (1999), NTUSA (2000). Ten years
strategy which sidestepped once and for all the pesky challenges of the traditional play form. Out the
on, all but one remain, still at the forefront, touring even bigger venues, acclaimed6 in family newspapers.
window went plot, situation, character, psychology, dramatic arc, narrative through-line, pity and terror and
Not that this should be surprising, for ensembles are the closest thing we have to institutions7, and like all
that damned third act.
institutions tend toward self-perpetuation (as long as human self-perpetuation is held in check. Nothing
threatens an ensemble like the pram in the hall).
Playwrights have never had that luxury. No matter how weird and woolly a play may be, it is first and
always a language structure written to be spoken, and for a play to “work,”11 people must be willing to
1 It pains me to say that in writing this piece, I realized that the shorthand I’ve always used to represent a decade —two years with the same last number, e.g., sit and listen to it. Which, without getting too technical on you, ain’t beanbag. All but the dreariest plays
1950-1960—is actually 11 years. I now know the first decade of PRELUDE is 2004 – 2013, but it still looks funny and includes an initial season so different “work” in the limited sense that you can and will follow12 them.
from the rest that it’s like an inning of baseball that suddenly turned into nine holes of golf… I’m really only talking 9 years here, and not even that because I
haven’t seen 2013, so we’re down to 8 (2005-12), and counting.

2 Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper had been making work under their own names since the mid 1990s, but adopted the name in 2005 at the insistence of Actors’
Equity, based on some Equity rule only they understand. You can’t make this stuff up.

3 (2003-2012, death by implosion)

8 Most of these playwrights have not (yet) appeared in PRELUDE. Other than that, this list is entirely objective, comprehensive, inclusive, diverse and non-
4 If you don’t know the word “sitzfleisch,” it’s now yours at no extra charge. fattening.

5 Any exact definition of “ensemble” gets pretty slippery. Absent the rare collective, the Platonic ensemble consists of a company of performers gathered 9 This is actually all I am trying to say.
around one or two principal creators. This was as true of the Performance Group as it was of Byrd Hoffman and the Ridiculous. At the other extreme stands
the lone-polymath theatremaker who may nonetheless gather a company about him, or her. The Ontological-Hysteric comes to mind, as does SITI. But where 10 I’m not sure if this is what is meant by “devised theatre” because I don’t know what “devised theatre” means.
does the hydra-headed NTUSA fit, or the traveling sisterhood of Half Straddle? Is Richard Maxwell a playwright, a director, a producer? It all depends.
11 Plays we are told, must work. Suffering the curse of Adam; they are not allowed to play.
6 Or not.
12 Even more to the point, you will also be able to anticipate them, which is the key to maintaining audience attention. Once you know the play form, you can
7 That the repertory company, their closest equivalent in funded non-profit theatre, has been virtually extinct for decades tells you pretty much all you need to drop into any play at any point and almost immediately orient yourself in terms of time and action. Even if you don’t know exactly how it will end, you can make a
know about the respective differences. There is also the matter of clerical staff. Once your clerical staff gets big enough, you have to put the temps on stage. very good guess as to when and how much more there is to come.

THE MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER 9

 INTRODUCTION

THE TEN YEAR PRELUDE:

A FORWARD-LOOKING BACKWARD GLANCE
(continued)
by Jeffrey M. Jones

The conventional play form13 is durable precisely because it is the result of so many years of trial and And if it is also striking how little impact 40 years of the American avant-garde has had on seasonal
error, the sum total of the dramatic constructs that will reliably hold an audience for an hour or two, subscription theatres, it may be significant that plays as quietly radical as The Designated Mourner
independent of content. Many of the earlier experimental playwrights tried as hard as possible to get and Mr. Burns have been produced within the last few months at The Public Theatre and Playwrights
away from the play form: one thinks of Mee’s collage experiments, Shawn’s monologs, Foreman’s Horizons.
pointillist dreamscapes, Jesurun’s manic talking heads and Wellman’s nonsense plays. The new
generation, by contrast, generally take the play form as their starting point, then mess with it. I’ve left out a lot, of course—completely skipped over solo performers like Andrew Schneider and Cynthia
Hopkins and Carl Hancock Rux and Joe Silovsky (but how could one classify them?), along with the
Some, in fact, have written what might pass for realistic plays save for the one telling detail which calls choreographers, dancers, composers, musicians, media artists, even (yikes!) critics. Many PRELUDES
the whole representational framework into question. Erin Courtney’s Demon Baby tosses a malign featured mini-festivals of work from other countries I never even saw, extensive panel discussions I
garden gnome into a group of young professionals in contemporary London; Madeleine George’s The had to miss, and media showcases I didn’t hang around for. I hear the parties were pretty good, too. For
Zero Hour finds World War II Nazis on the 7 train; Julia May Jonas’14 Evelyn steps straight out of celebrity that matter, how is it even possible to speak of PRELUDE without mentioning the indefatigable Frank
rehab into The Bacchae. Others—as with Will Eno’s Thom Paine (Based on Nothing) or Kristen Kosmas’ Hentschker, who seems throughout to be in two places at once?
There, There--work in the opposite direction, setting an ordinary three-dimensional (i.e., “rounded,”
moyen-sensuel) character against an erased, blurred or otherwise featureless landscape. Playwrights as But I’m out of space. Over my word count. As to what the next decade of PRELUDE may bring?
different as Lisa D’Amour (Detroit) and Thomas Bradshaw (take your pick) start with realistic premises,
step on the gas, and let increasingly out-of-control passions drive the whole thing off a cliff. In Crime Well, first of all, that’s totally …
or Emergency, Sibyl Kempson shifts between dramatic realities with each successive scene, while her
Secret Death of Puppets15 presents the “story” on audiotape, as a kind of radio drama, as the author runs
-Jeffrey M. Jones
around the stage, shifting the empty chairs that represent the “characters.”Still others play even more Playwright and essayist, New York, 2013
complicated games with structure: the linguistic traceries and arabesques of Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear;
the loop-the-loop and threaded mazes of Jason Grote’s 1001; Erin Courtney’s A Map of Virtue, based on
the ring composition theories of Mary Douglas. Madelyn Kent’s Peninsula and Kempson’s Ich KürbisGeist
are more or less normal plays written in fractured English. Rob Erickson’s Off the Hozzle is autobiographic
monolog fed through a loop machine while Andrew Ondrecjak’s Feast channel-surfs through a linguistic
Jabberwocky. Richard Maxwell’s People Without History and Young Jean Lee’s The Appeal trash the
most basic conventions of the history play (including but not limited to, historical accuracy). Jackie
Sibblies Drury (We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as
Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-191516) and Lucas Hnath
(A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney), each in their own way,
have even written recursive history plays, in which “actual” characters comment on the very play which
they’re performing.

It seems safe to say the American theatre has never experienced a decade of such feverish invention.

Is it too early to gauge the impact of the resurgent playwright? Probably; yet I find it striking that many of
the newer groups (Hoi Polloi, Half Straddle, The TEAM, 600 HIGHWAYMEN) have also moved toward a
more text-centric approach, while other companies (ERS: Gatz; Daniel Fish: …A Supposedly Fun Thing…)
are literally staging books and some go even further, into a kind of documentary theatre (ERS’s Arguendo,
OK Theatre’s massive Life And Times17. But the long-term impact of playwriting may be the final bridging
of the gap between the experimental and the institutional theatres. Plays, after all, are portable; they are
designed to be repeatable.
13 Play (n): a story in dialog about characters going about their business, whom you’re meant to care about.

14 a/k/a/ Nellie Tinder

15 For the sake of example, I am limiting myself to playwrights who have been part of PRELUDE, and trying not to repeat myself. But the fact is most of these
writers have pursued several of these strategies in different plays: thus Washburn has also written several history plays and another piece which also shifts
dramatic narrative with each scene; Lee’s also written a church service and a cabaret act; etc. etc.
(Above) Dream of the Red Chamber, directed by Jim Findlay at PRELUDE 13.
16 In terms of long, weird titles, this rivals the German bestseller, Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.

17 This piece is the closest thing to a “hit show” in contemporary experimental theatre, though Gatz and We’re Gonna Die come close. As on Broadway, with
a “hit show,” mass appeal counts more than critical acclaim. One of the most interesting trends in contemporary experimental theatre is radically lowering the
barrier to entry. LeCompte, Foreman and Wilson were all to some degree deliberately difficult, aggressively odd, unashamedly arty. The newer stuff is typically
obvious on the surface, and often downright goofy. This may be the wave of the future…

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

PR E LU D E
is ...

MARIANNE WEEMS
PRELUDE is a critical part of the organism.
(Def: a form of life composed of mutually interdependent parts that maintain various
vital processes.)

(Above) The Universe is a Small Hat, directed by Cesar Alvarez and Sarah Benson at PRELUDE 13.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

YOUNG JEAN LEE

PRELUDE is something that was cool ten
years ago when it started,
and is still cool now.
Somehow it just never went downhill.
PAVOL LISKA
PRELUDE is the big bang of New York theater,
where you can see the very origins of work.

AARON LANDSMAN
PRELUDE is where the conversation
starts, veers, arranges itself and gets deep.

(Above) Seagull (Thinking of you), directed by Tina Satter/Half Straddle at PRELUDE 11.
(Opposite) Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, directed by Young Jean Lee at PRELUDE 05.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

GIDEON LESTER
PRELUDE is like the book I most want to read each fall,
with each page full of surprises, cliff-hangers and revelations
that change my sense of what’s possible in performance.

(Clockwise from above R) Benjamin Forster in Liz One, directed by John Jesurun at PRELUDE
09; Jack Ferver in All of a Sudden, by Jack Ferver in collaboration with Joshua Lubin-Levy at
PRELUDE 12; Donelle Woolford in Dick’s Joke, directed by Donelle Woolford at PRELUDE 11;
Black-Eyed Susan in Liz One, directed by John Jesurun at PRELUDE 09.

VALLEJO GANTNER
PRELUDE is a perfect cultural embodiment of New York City.
Always evolving, always exciting,
too crowded, with too much to see in too little time.

(R) Water (Or the Secret Life of Objects), written by Sheila

Callaghan at PRELUDE 08.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

(Above) Lucy Kaminsky in Pink Melon Joy, directed by Katherine Brook at PRELUDE 13. (Above) Ryosuke Yamada and Yuki Kawahisa in Americana Kamikaze, directed by Kenneth Collins, Temporary Distortion at
PRELUDE 08.

MAC WELLMAN BRIAN ROGERS

PRELUDE is the one indispensable theater festival PRELUDE continues to be absolutely indispensable.
in New York City - it is adventurous, intelligent and utterly free of As an artist, a presenter, and everything in between
the corporate mediocrity that typifies most of the mainstream. -so much of how I understand and relate to the work of
PRELUDE I hope is here to stay as there is nothing like it! theater artists has its roots here.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

JASON GROTE
PRELUDE is like a friendship caught on fire.
(Above) Water (Or the Secret Life of Objects), written by Sheila Callaghan at PRELUDE 08.

(Below) Comme Toujours Here I Stand, by Big Dance Theater at PRELUDE 08.

KRISTEN KOSMAS
PRELUDE is hands-down my favorite
American theater festival celebration intellectual convention slash
extended family reunion
that I secretly wish could go on all year long every year from now to
eternity.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

JOSEPH V. MELILLO
PRELUDE is a valuable resource for discourse on the pursuit
of art, culture and ideas
within the 21st century here in New York City.

(Above) This Place is a Desert, directed by Jay Scheib at PRELUDE 05.

(Opposite) Jeff Biehl in Water (Or the Secret Life of Objects), written by Sheila Callaghan at PRELUDE 08.

JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY

PRELUDE is an opportunity to peer into the future
and see work that will have a profound effect
on you next year.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

THE ARTISTS

ANNE CATTANEO Over this last decade I have looked to

the PRELUDE Festival for new ideas,
for information about new writers and
theaters, and as an important bridge to the international theater
community. Its range of programming and guest artists provides
an important service, enriching the New York theater.

DAN SAFER 1. PRELUDE exists at this wonderful

intersection of academic conference and
mosh pit. Inside the walls of a reputable
institution, we are encouraged to make a
mess and push the boundaries, and it is
acknowledged that THAT IS IMPORTANT,
and a discourse is created around
those messes and potentialities, and I
as a maker of things and events have
realized things about what I do and what
other people do that I would not have
recognized otherwise, and that is an
incredible service and experience.
2. PRELUDE is a place to recognize, “oh, this is the community I
am in, these are my contemporaries,” and that is deeply, deeply
valuable.

3. The first time we did PRELUDE, we collaborated with Japanese

writer/ director/ choreographer Mikuni Yanaihara, and she
admired my Crocs and said they were cool. Nobody has done that
since then.

(From top) Comme Toujours Here I Stand, by Big Dance Theater at PRELUDE 08; Drunkfish
Oceanrant, co-production by Kristine Haruna Lee & Built for Collapse at Preluse13; Spotlight Japan
Auto-Da-Fe by Matasaka Matsuda and Josh Fox/Internaonal WOW Copmany at PRELUDE 07.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

RUTH WIKLER-LUKER Every fall, PRELUDE erupts like a volcano JAY SCHEIB PRELUDE is by an extraordinary
inside the otherwise calm mountain of the margin my favorite favorite
CUNY Graduate Center. The Festival’s hot convening of artists anywhere.
lava of artists, experiments, experiences, and A catalyst for emerging work,
participants disrupts the building’s monastic for nascent endeavours, and
tranquility, its studious lence, its bureaucratic for experiments are in that
hum. Iconoclasts arrive in droves to infuse moment still experiments, still
the building’s lovely neutrality with action- unsettled and still unsettling
based questions about how and how far to prod, push, and transform the PRELUDE festival has established an
theatrical form. This frenetic energy of performance science bonds environment for an ongoing revolution in the
the diverse streams of PRELUDE people together, and they leave this New York City theater scene. Scholars, critics,
unlikely place feeling refreshed, reconnected, and inspired. producers, artists actually find themselves in
The university is not unchanged either: there’s always a lot of cleanup dialogue one with the other. This is beyond
to do after PRELUDE (from floor-sweeping to fence-mending) but important. And my gratitude is similarly beyond.
PRELUDE teaches its institution what can happen when it flings its Beyond measure.
heavy, ornate doors wide, wide open.

(L) A dance in progress, by Big Dance Theater

at PRELUDE 05.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

MALLORY CATLETT I first did something in PRELUDE in 2004, ERIN COURTNEY I remember this intense feeling of being
I think. It was early work on a piece that at part of a community of experimental
the time was called The Littlewood Project. trouble makers who were all gathering
By 2006 it was called OH WHAT WAR and in the hallways and theaters and lobby
PRELUDE asked us back. There are things of the Grad Center. Everyone wanted
I make that take a long time and PRELUDE to see everything and everyone was
always seems to be there for me with excited. Sarah Benson and I were working
them - Red Fly Blue Bottle (Latitude 14), on a piece called “Quiver and Twitch”
Beowulf (BB&B), City Council Meeting that featured a young boy puppet, built
(Aaron Landsman & Jim Findlay) and now and performed by the singular Kevin
this year with This Was The End (Restless Augustine. This was the 2005 PRELUDE
NYC). I also curated a series of 4 new and Young Jean Lee presented “Songs
translations of Catalan plays for PRELUDE. of the Dragon Flying to Heaven” which
I had been bugging Frank for years about begins with a video of a close-up of
this, and he gave me the opportunity and Young Jean’s face as she is being
sent me to Barcelona. PRELUDE has been a kind of landing strip slapped, hard across the cheek, multiple times. The moment
for me - where you can touch down for a couple days, show some of impact of the slap is edited out, but the recoil after each slap
piece of a work, talk to your friends, see something surprising you remains. I was sitting in the third row with Scott Adkins, and we
didn’t know was out there, have a few drinks and some new ideas, knew that Young Jean had made this video and we were both
start a few fights, then get back up in the air, back to work. What feeling very worried about watching it. I felt upset by the idea of
Frank started 10 years ago is a real joy for me. It’s great to be her being physically hurt as performance. Songs of the Dragon
asked, but just going and seeing other people’s work is also great. is about many things, but one of the things it deals with is self
The many memorable things - Collapsable Giraffe in the lobby, hatred. Using her own body as the gateway into this painful
Andrew Dinwiddie’s “Swaggart,” Shatner expounding on art thanks and beautiful work of theater was absolutely disarming and
to Phil Soltonoff and Joe Deibes, getting hit in the face with an yet essential for this particular piece of art. This was violence
empty box in Jay Scheib’s “World of Wires,” Sybil Kempson’s made that provoked, yes, but it also provided a space for deeper
up language, clinging to the words of Jonathan Foster Wallace as contemplation. Even as I am writing this, I am thinking What?
an actress in headphones approached the end of a diving board What? That cannot be correct; how can I be saying that violence
because of Daniel Fish, sitting in the dark with Trajal Harrell, Reggie can invoke contemplation? Eight years later, a multitude of
Watts turning a panel discussion into an actual conversation, and PRELUDE performances, panels, videos, and dance parties have
Kristen Kosmas’ breathtaking “This From Cloudland.” To name just inspired me to make better work, introduced me to new artists,
a few. And the things I missed, that were going on in the next room. taught me about process and challenged me as an audience
To Frank and all the many curators/producers over the years, many member, but that first slap in the face remains for me a unique
of whom are friends - Andy, Geoffrey, Morgan, Helen, Caleb, Claire, theatrical wake up call to pursue the limits of my own discomfort
Ruth, Bertie - what a mark you have made. Thank you. and to face what I fear.

(L and opposite) A Fiery Flying

Roll, or Dick, Dick, Dick by
Radiohole at PRELUDE 05.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

BONNIE MARRANCA Over the last decade the Martin E. Segal

Theatre Center’s PRELUDE program has
been a highlight of the start of each theatre
season. Its guests read like a Who’s Who of
downtown theatre, with an ever-expanding
field of vision. PRELUDE brings together
companies, writers, directors, presenters,
critics, and curators for afternoons or
(Above) Comme Toujours Here I Stand, by Big Dance Theater at PRELUDE 08.
evenings of intelligent conversation
about new work and important current topics, such as the growing
ANNIE-B PARSON We in the theater need our seasonal rituals
intersection of theatre and performance art, and the focus on process.
just like all tribes, and PRELUDE has become
There are also previews of productions and plays for the upcoming
just that for me. Each Fall, for a decade,
season, with presentations by artists of their work and artistic process.
I participate in, and cherish our autumnal
On occasion there are spotlights on the work of countries abroad, such
harvest festival called PRELUDE. The
as Poland and Korea, underlining the Segal Center’s global outreach.
operating principle of Prelude is works still
What is exceptionally valuable is the cross-generational, cross-media
in process and in framing it as such, the
camaraderie that occurs among artists, and in which the public is
audience is both forgiving of the chaff and
invited to share at the many events offered. Under the far-sighted
desirous of the wheat. Therefore, since its
programming of its executive director, Frank Hentschker, PRELUDE
inception, I have shown unfinished work,
has evolved as a lively center of serious engagement with the broad
presenting something with an implied sign,
spectrum of performance and writing offered by the most innovative
“warning: wet paint.”
thinkers working today in theatre in New York.
Under the passionate, curious eyes of Frank Hentschker, we show
what we have been doing in rehearsal to the people he gathers, the
congregants of our strange church, perfect for our needs at that
(Below) Joseph Beuys in NYC, by Jackson Pollock Bar at PRELUDE 11.
moment. We don’t know what we have when we present it, and yet
we leave in a different phase of the work, pushing towards some
final version. It’s always nerve- wracking as hell, one of the required
indignities of our business: to show what we have not completed.
Curation is not shopping—it isn’t- picking this and not picking that. It is
a rendering of many materials into a community of work. Frank and
his curators, including Helen Shaw and Caleb Hammons, through their
good juju and true understanding of the inner workings of the clocks
of new material, have nurtured audiences to smartly observe work
in gestational form. These talented curators cluster and shape an
event, coaxing the bevy of works to behave in a context of the “hand
made” where failure is a given, a familiar old friend, part of the show.

Without that old friend, nothing would ever get righted. We see it in
others’ work too, and it reminds us that we, the lot of us, are cynics,
questioning everything, and we have to do it in front of each other.
There is no other way. Process is the grammar of PRELUDE. Everyone
there knows it. And amid the autumnal cornucopia of small successes
and larger failures, we say together:
Amen.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS
DAVID COTE SIBYL KEMPSON
Ten years on: looking back at PRELUDE “See you at the ‘Lude, dude.”
Over the years the structure and thinking behind PRELUDE has slowly
As theater editor and chief drama critic for a weekly magazine (and
its online version), I write brief reviews and occasional news items for dawned on me, and its influence and importance. It’s where all the thinkers
general audience. My readers are a mix of theater artists, fans, tourists, are. But there’s no snobbery about it. And there is no place setting for
academics and savvy culture vultures. It’s a restless, motley audience competition. It’s a charting out and a confirmation of the ways in which
with diverse needs. One thing’s for sure: my writing is not aimed at we are cooperating. When you go, you can’t help but care about what’s
avant-garde specialists. I can’t issue windy manifestoes or theoretical happening there. Everyone who goes is participating. Every time I go I get
proclamations without alienating my base—or simply irritating it. butterflies and also a (‘rising’?) feeling in my chest. It’s a chance to check in
with the exaltation part of being human, and it helps put the daily grind-type
Moreover, I’m deeply invested in the evaluative and interpretative
artist concerns in their proper perspective for the progressing year.
dimension of criticism. My reviews are not above saying whether I like
or dislike; whether it’s worthy or a waste of time. And yes, we use a It’s been 10 YEARS?????
star-rating system. Pretentious bloggers and snobby dramaturgs—as My first time I’ll never forget. It was while I was still deliriously crazing my
disgusted by the media as they are ignorant of its workings—eagerly way through the CUNY Brooklyn College MFA program, so that would have
point out that I’m no Herbert Blau or Richard Gilman. Very true. What been sometime between 2004 and 2007. Sarah Benson was curating
I can be, though, is a conduit between a larger audience and rarefied at that time. I remember showing up at the very dignified CUNY Graduate
contemporary practices. I can try to translate the jargon of academia Center and basically camping out for the entire festival, just attending one
into vibrant, persuasive language to help a spectator appreciate event after another and feeling completely invigorated the whole time, my
an event. In New York alone, the experimental-theater world has brain and heart singing together in harmony. There was so much to talk
undergone profound changes in the decade since PRELUDE began about and everyone was really talking and discussing everything we were
convening panels and presenting works in progress. Among the various seeing. So many ideas at work and so much freshness and in this beautiful
phenomena I’ve noticed through PRELUDE (some of which date back to setting - not in a dark basement or a late night black box on the outskirts -
and yet with such a blessed lack of marketing or hype-hype.
1960s and ’70s): relational aesthetics as play; postdramatic staging;
opera-theater hybrids; digital and mixed-media dramaturgy; historical
I couldn’t believe how much was going on and how much I loved everything
meta-(mis)representation; and the fascinating range of textual that I saw, all the performances, all the writing, how much it seemed to apply
strategies in new plays that range from found text to Internet-age to me and how much it meant to me to see that work being presented in
poetics. such a ‘legitimate’ setting. It was an affirmation of the community we have
here, and continues to be every year. Not the kind of community that is
That’s where the great value of PRELUDE comes in. Year after year, it ‘fostered’ but a real gathering of tribes that reminds me in a very concrete,
offers a panoramic view of the creative processes of young (and not-so- palpable way that we are all working something together, even if we are in
young) artists and theorists. It demonstrates the variety and ferment of separate processes and applying for the same grants.
the theatrical avant-garde, constantly evolving and reacting. As a critic
and commentator, PRELUDE goads me to ask myself: How do I write In the years since I started my yearly migration to the ‘Lude, I’ve been
about this work? honored to be asked to sit on a panel or two and have also seen some
of my own work performed there. Which is a thrill. But it’s really just as
wonderful to get to go as an audience member and partake. When you’ve
got something happening at the ‘Lude, you don’t get to see as much of
other stuff. Either way, I want to grow old at and with the PRELUDE Festival.
(Below and oppsite)This Place is a Desert, directed by Jay Scheib at PRELUDE 05. Here’s to ten more of another ten years!

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ELIZA BENT
2007-2009 2012
The author sits at work and receives a press release about the PRELUDE The author sits at work and gets a cryptic email asking what she is
festival. It looks cool and she pours over the program. The artists whose working on.
names she recognizes she loves. The artists she’s unfamiliar with, well, She mentions a show about wizards, which gets scheduled for PRELUDE.
she’d better get to know. She attends and is enraptured. She is ecstatic. But also terrified. Her collaborator is doing another show
and the piece, which requires an audience, is rehearsed in a frenzy at her
2010 apt. This isn’t what being a real artist was supposed to be, she thinks.
The author sits at work. She is now technically a playwright, in addition to “Black Wizard / Blue Wizard” is part of Songspiel. It’s another madhouse,
being a sometimes-actor. She receives the PRELUDE press release and but no Styrofoam. A line stretches out the door to the lobby. The author is
is deeply envious of everyone involved. She looks in the mirror to see if filled with excitement and fear. She returns to her improvisational roots,
she’s turned green. She has not, but vows to work harder and to one day chatting casually—and in costume—with the people in line. She hears her
be a real artist. cue and enters the theatre. It is deliriously fun.

2011
The author learns she’ll be performing in PRELUDE with Half Straddle.
She is ecstatic! She arrives late to work and listens to a voicemail.

Hi Eliza, Frank Hentscher from the Segal Center! Call me back about
interviewing someone for one of our programs. Also, will we see you at
PRELUDE? Hope so, ciao!

The author returns Frank’s call.

FH: Hallo?
EB: Hi Frank, it’s Eliza Bent from American Theatre magazine.

They discuss the interview, which has nothing to do with PRELUDE.

FH: Ah very good. So, will I see you at PRELUDE?

EB: Yeah! That’s me on the poster.
FH: What? Who are you?
EB: I’m Eliza Bent. I’m performing in Seagull? I’m on the poster
FH: Ah that is you!?
EB: Yeah.
FH: You’re a cover girl! Who are you? Which one?
EB: I’m wearing the red lipstick.
FH: Ah. Ha ha! You look different. So you will do Seagull at the Segal
Center. Ha ha!
EB: Ha ha!

At the performance, there are Styrofoam benches in the gallery space,

and it’s a mad house. The author rolls along on a skate board observing
the huge windows on the street where onlookers who couldn’t squeeze
in watch. It’s super fun. She’s relieved she doesn’t fall off the skateboard.

At the after party, Frank lifts up Becca Blackwell on the dance floor. It is
Epic.

(Above, from L) Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage, by Banana Bag & Bodice at PRELUDE 08; Spotlight Japan
The Blue Bird by Mikuni Yanaihara and Dan Safer/Witness Relocation at PRELUDE 07.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS
TOM SELLAR

New York City in the 21st Century is not Greenwich Village, 1963.
It is not SoHo in the 1970s, or Loisada in the 1980s. There is no
single neighborhood calling to seekers of aesthetic, political, or
sexual revelation. There is no center, no haven, no focal point to the
performance world—perhaps understandably, given the diversities
embedded within it today.

This is what I simultaneously revere and mourn in our theater

community, spread as it is across disparate parts of a dense city,
separated by rivers and train lines and by less conspicuous barriers of
society, real estate, and outmoded disciplinary thinking. Keeping up with
progressive thinkers and theater-makers in this town means putting
on a good pair of sneakers and criss-crossing the boroughs to locate
and join the innovators in their hideouts, in garages and community
centers, makeshift studios, in corners claimed in schools and parks, in
living rooms and parking lots and on rooftops. And, of course, in actual
theaters and galleries and art houses. Everyone finds their own thread
of readings, workshops, performances, openings, parties—and the
weave can be rich and beautiful.

What we often lack in this continuously expanding metropolitan

constellation, however, is any sense of a public to address. Or the
feeling of belonging to a cohesive common cause. For the past decade,
PRELUDE has offered a glimpse of both. For a few days each year, the
map is condensed and this far-flung geography is reduced to a human
scale.

For me, PRELUDE is an improbable convergence and a foreshadowing.

We convene at the city’s centermost point, in the shadow of the Empire
State’s great capitalist spire, to share a building and a headspace. We
reflect on the season about to set off, a big-bang of the calendar and
of the mind which will soon send us reeling and keep us in continuous
movement across the urban sprawl, through the maze in search of
the next piece of the whole. For now, though, we come together for an
experience of community—temporary and provisional, but palpable—to
sustain another year of living apart.

(Above, from top) World of Wires, directed by Jay Scheib at PRELUDE 11; Red Fly/Blue Bottle, by Christina Campanella and
Stephanie Fleischmann at PRELUDE 07.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS

THE CURATORS

HELEN SHAW

At the end of PRELUDE.12, my co-curator Caleb and I were a little worried

that we had broken CUNY. We had stuffed over 50 performances into a
festival that usually had two dozen; at one point during one of the raucous
Gershwin cabarets, Bridget Everett had picked Frank Hentschker up
bodily and borne him away for some unspeakable serenade. And yet we
had also seen Frank wrestle an actor nearly to the death during a Sibyl
Kempson piece (so we knew he was resilient) and everywhere we turned
we saw happy, fascinated, still-game faces. In my two years at PRELUDE,
it dawned on me that this was exactly the magic of a festival dedicated to
the snippet, the trailer, the sneak-peek, the process. Give us our theatrical
overload in bite-size snippets and we can eat and eat while never feeling
full.

In the years I was coming to PRELUDE as a critic and theatergoer, I always

left feeling inspired. But after seeing it from the inside—seeing the insane
(Above) Seagull (Thinking of you), directed by Tina Satter/
Half Straddle at PRELUDE 11; (L) Aoi!, an adaptation of Yukio commitment from Frank and the Segal and CUNY, seeing the ego-less
Mishima’s The Lady Aoi, directed by Kameron Steele/The South
Wing at PRELUDE 07. delight artists find in one another’s creations, I have found inspiration on
(Opposite) Spotlight Japan Auto-Da-Fe, by Matasaka Matsuda
and Josh Fox/International WOW Company at PRELUDE 07. a completely different level. My private (now public) hope is that PRELUDE
is recreated elsewhere, that other campuses and theaters realize how a
festival so blissfully free from commercial and critical concerns serves its
art-making community.

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ANDY HORWITZ

ON PRELUDE Every year I come back to PRELUDE excited to see what the new curators
have done, who the new artists are and what new ideas, aesthetics and
My first PRELUDE Festival experience was in 2005 and it is still one of my interrogations are on everyone’s minds. And every year I come back
favorites. to see Frank and marvel at the work he’s doing, tirelessly, year in and
year out. One of Frank’s unique talents is his ability to create a space
Nature Theater of Oklahoma showed a draft of “Poetics;” Jay Scheib, where academics, artists and audiences come together in curious and
Richard Maxwell, Mac Wellman and NTUSA all gave us glimpses into mutually respectful conversation. The programming at the Segal Center is
their process. I saw what is still my favorite incarnation of Young Jean evidence of that, but the PRELUDE Festival is Frank’s enduring gift to our
Lee’s “Songs Of The Dragons Flying To Heaven:” a staged reading in the community. And having been a PRELUDE curator has continued to be one
Elebash. of my most treasured gifts.
I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I came to believe that there are
several factors at work that make PRELUDE so special. First is that
the festival is all works-in-progress, so there’s no pressure to perform.
Second is that it is the only time all year where everyone can get together
in an environment that is both social and focused on the work, where the
whole community is free from the pressures of the marketplace, to just
do the thing we love – make and watch and talk about theater. And then
drink.

When Frank Hentschker offered Geoffrey Jackson Scott and me the

opportunity to follow Sarah Benson as co-curators of PRELUDE, I was
honored. Since launching Culturebot.org in December 2003 I had
inhabited this peculiar, precarious liminal space between administrator,
producer, critic, scholar, and sometime artist. PRELUDE was where it all
came together for me in both theory and practice. PRELUDE was where
I started to think of curating and criticism as creative practices unto
themselves, and it was my first canvas. I have always been of the opinion (R) Schmoetics (A Poetics Talk by Tina Satter),
by Tina Satter/Half Straddle at PRELUDE 12;
that you look for the artists and collaborators who interest you, who pique (Below) War Lesbian, directed by Kristine
Haruna Lee at PRELUDE 12.
your imagination with their perspective and questions, put them together
and see what you can learn from the unexpected juxtapositions. PRELUDE
was the first time I got to really experiment with that, and I think it was
successful.

In 2007 I was lucky to have Geoffrey as a co-curator as we stumbled

through that first year. It turned out well, but it was a steep learning
curve! In 2008 Frank, Geoffrey and I started to come up with ideas – like
bringing Morgan on as festival dramaturg - that pushed the festival to the
next level conceptually but required more resources. We were fortunate
to find a great group of collaborators including Rebecca Sheahan, Allison
Lyman and Kimon Keramides who were willing to dedicate immeasurable
amounts of time and energy to the project.

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 THE ARTISTS & CURATORS
GEOFFREY JACKSON SCOTT

PRELUDE Piece... The End.

The Beginning. Frank believed strongly in term limits--a feeling I inherited from him. Be
My relationship with PRELUDE began sometime around ‘05 or ‘06 warned Artistic Directors!--so to be invited back in 2009 was a gift cuz I was
as a member of the audience. The festival was my orientation to set to wrap after year two in 2008. At the start, Frank was like, “Who have
the contemporary performance scene in NYC. I’d recently moved out you always wanted to curate into PRELUDE?” And, without hesitation, I
from Chicago to take a fellowship in literary management at New York replied, “Marina Abramovic.” That’s pretty much how we ended up on a path
Theatre Workshop (NYTW). In that role, my everyday was all about new to get Marina and Klaus into the festival. She brought along her documentary
plays and playwrights. crew and so cameras were EVERYWHERE! We were experimenting with
PRELUDE was something different entirely. Night after night my sense livestreaming things that year too--and may have started this the year before
of what was possible for theatre grew. And this is coming from a guy when we also dabbled in Second Life--and I remember the film crew knocked
whose training was pretty traditional, you know? Like a real well-made my camera to the ground effectively killing the livestream and pissing off folks
play kind of mindset. PRELUDE exploded that and I was --and am-- who were watching from wherever. It was so crazy!
The whole festival as a platform grew like mad that year too. Some of the
forever grateful for that push into new directions.
things I was interested in working against--the festival as a commercial-
necessarily came back, but on the whole it was a great, great way to go
The Middle. out. Anybody remember that panel discussion helmed by Claire Bishop and
When Frank invited me to curate the festival alongside Andy, it was featuring David Levine, Aaron Landsman, Bruce HIgh Quality Foundation and
a pretty crazy ask. Here I was, this guy whose mind had only recently Marina? Remember when Marina whispered something to David - about
been blown, being offered an opportunity to paint a picture of the field needing to get to dinner, I think - and just got up and walked off the stage and
on what was to me a MAJOR canvas. That first year at bat--2007--I’m out of the room? Haha. Yeah, 2009 was a great year.
gonna skip over that. I was still finding my sea legs and figuring out Though my formal relationship with PRELUDE ended in 2009, the effects of my
what I might have to add to a pretty robust conversation. Basically, that time with the festival continue on. I continue on in that mode of research and
first year, I was winging it. But by 2008, with a strong assist from Andy discovery and the asking of questions that first sparked in PRELUDE.08. And
and, later, Morgan, I learned where I’d personally gone wrong in 2007. I continue on thinking from the audience position in my current role as Director,
At that time I thought PRELUDE was about making statements when it New Play Development at Victory Gardens in Chicago. That gig is all about
was really about asking questions--it wanted to be a dialogue and not a public programming--developing the public conversation around the work--and
monologue. sussing out the institution “plays” within the context of the city, the nation, the
The questions in 2008 were about the particular performance ecology world. In a very real sense, bridging the worlds of art and public life--which is
of NY and also the distance between the “performing” arts and the part of what we were up to in those years--burns on in me even today.
“visual.” We juxtaposed the work of theatre artists / theatre art against
the work of visual artists / visual art to see what there was to see-
So, PRELUDE? Yeah, that shit was crazy. Where to next?
to explore the differences / similarities / traditions and to ask why
things like difference even mattered and to whom. For me personally,
it was a year of questioning my place in the field and coming to an
understanding that as much as I cared about the art, I cared as much--if
not more--about the audience. So, yeah, in 2008, the audience and the
audience experience, the sense that art of any stripe is an utterance--a
speech act in search of a receiver--came to the fore. It’s also the year
that Helen Shaw called me a “performance studies egghead” in print.
At the time, I had no f-ing clue what that meant.

(opposite) Dream of the Red Chamber, directed by Jim Findlay at PRELUDE 13.

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 TEN YEARS
of
PR E LUDE
2003-2013
(Above) Americana Kamikaze, directed by Kenneth Collins/ Temporary Distortion at PRELUDE
08.

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 PRELUDE 03
(From top) Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Nature Theater of Oklahoma; Chautauqua, by the National
Theater of the United States of America at PRELUDE 08.

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 PRELUDE 03

CURATORS’ NOTE
A New York first---the magnificent pre-season celebration of some of
the best theatre that New York City has to offer, the PRELUDE weekend
will provide a forum that exemplifies the diverse work being produced by
members of New York’s distinctive non-profit Off-Broadway community.
The Graduate Center will host 16 member companies of the Alliance of
Resident Theatres / New York, providing New York students, faculty and
teachers, theatre professionals, and theatre-goers a first look at the
eclectic work being developed for the upcoming 2003-04 season and
beyond.

Inspired by Washington, D.C’s Kennedy Center program Journey from

Page to Stage, the PRELUDE to Off-Broadway weekend will include
readings of new plays, sample rehearsals and process workshop, as
well as a series of panel discussions. Many of the presentations will be
followed by discussion. Audience members will have a rare chance to see
plays in the early stages of development, and artistic directors will have a
chance to talk about their developmental process in front of the audience
and colleagues.

DISCUSSIONS
Illuminating 30 Years of Not for Profit Off Broadway Theatre
Moderator: Lisa Stevenson (Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York)

Fringe and Mainstream: Closer Than You Think?

Moderator: Jim Horton (Castillo Theatre)

A Dialogue Between Off And Off-Off Broadway Artistic Directors And A

Group Of Emerging Theatre Artists
Moderator: Daniel Talbot (Rising Phoenix Rep.)
(Below) Leah Nanako Winkler in Work Hard Play Harder: a manifesto by a next generation theatre maker, directed by Leah
Nanako Winkler/Everywhere Theatre Group at PRELUDE 12.

This QR code will take you directly to the

PRELUDE digital archive of that year.

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 PRELUDE 04
DISCUSSIONS
Illuminating the History of Not-for-Profit Off Broadway Theatre
Moderator: Ellen Stewart (La MaMa E.T.C.)

How to Know Where to Go:

Alternative Strategies for New York Theatre Companies to Get Their Work Noticed

New York Theatre Companies and International Theatre

(Above) Oh What War, directed by Mallory Catlett/Juggernaut Theatre Co. at PRELUDE 06.

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 PRELUDE 05
(Above) Dead City, by Sheila Callaghan/
New Georges; (L) Stanley, by Lisa D’Amour;
(Below) Songs of the Dragons Flying to
Heaven, directed by Young Jean Lee. All at
PRELUDE 05.

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 PRELUDE 05

CURATORS’ NOTE

PRELUDE ‘05 is a mini-festival celebrating and discussing the very best

of new and unconventional theatre being created NYC-based theatre
artists and companies. The event features 20 short performances,
readings, open rehearsals, and talkbacks – with a focus on works in
progress for the upcoming 2005-06 season and beyond. PRELUDE ’05
gives audiences the rare chance to see the work of NYC’s most exciting
theatre in one place and to experience the developmental process of
contemporary NYC theatre artists.

Curated by Sarah Benson and Frank Hentschker

DISCUSSIONS

NYC Theatre Within a Global Context

Moderator: David Cote (Time Out New York)
Participants: Eric Dyer (Radiohole), Vallejo Gantner (PS122), John Jesurn,
Paul Lazar (Big Dance Theater),
and Marianne Weems (The Builders Association)

(R) Sarah Benson, curator of PRELUDE 05; (Below) Peninsula, directed

by Madelyn Kent at PRELUDE 05.

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 PRELUDE 05

(Above) Songs of the Dragons

Flying to Heaven, directed by
Young Jean Lee at PRELUDE
05
(L & below) Todd D’Amour in
Stanley, by Lisa D’Amour. All at
PRELUDE 05.

(Above) Songs of the Dragons Flying to

Heaven, directed by Young Jean Lee; (R)
Susie Sokol in a monologue, directed
by John Collins/Elevator Repair Service;
(Below) Black-Eyed Susan and Jason
Lee in The Woman Who Loved too
Much, directed by John Jesurun. All at
PRELUDE 05.

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 PRELUDE 06
(L) Adventures of Charcoal Boy, by Eric Novak/Sarah Provost/Elyas
Khan; (Below)10 Plates, by Ex.PGirl and CUNY doctoral students in
theatre. Both at PRELUDE 06.

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 PRELUDE 06

CURATORS’ NOTE
PRELUDE ’06 brings together some of New York’s most distinctive
contemporary theatre artists and companies to participate in the fourth
annual festival and symposium featuring performances, readings, studio
presentations and open rehearsals with a focus on work in progress for
the 2007-07 season and beyond. PRELUDE 06 gives audience the rare
chance to see the upcoming work of New York’s most exciting theatre
in one place and to experience the developmental process of the city’s
best contemporary theatre artists and companies. All performances and
presentations will be followed by informal talk-backs with the artists.

Curated by Sarah Benson and Frank Hentschker

DISCUSSIONS

Theatre and the City:

Focusing How the City Reflects and Refracts New York Theatre
Moderators: Young Jean Lee (playwright) and Rangy Gener (The American Theatre)
Participants: Gregory Mosher(Columbia University), Kristin Marting (HERE Art Center)
Mark Russel (Producer, UNDER THE RADAR), Maria Goyanes,
and Rob Handel (13 Playwrights)

(Below) Pieces of David Greenspan’s adaptation of Aristotle’s Poetics and TMT’s adaptation of The Symposium, by Target
Margin Theater at PRELUDE 06.

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 PRELUDE 06

(Above) from L) The Whole Story and Nothing Butt, by Collapsable Giraffe at
PRELUDE 06; Gone, a work in progress, by Charles Mee, Jr. at PRELUDE 06.
(Below) Marian Seldes in a reading of several scenes of a new untitled play by Will
Eno; Both at PRELUDE 06.

(L, from top) The Grand Kindness by Amber

Reed, presented by Joyce Cho; Panel NYC
Critics/Bloggers with David Cote, Steve Luber
and others; Both at PRELUDE 06.

(R) Gone, a work in progress, by Charles

Mee, Jr. at PRELUDE 06.

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 PRELUDE 07
(Above) A vidoe/talk on the subject of the practice of
choreography by Annie-B Parson/Big Dance Theatre
at PRELUDE 07. (R)The Americas Trilogy by Lucidity
Suitcase Intercontinental at PRELUDE 07.
(Below)Red Fly/Blue Bottle by Christina Campanella
and Stephanie Fleischmann at PRELUDE 07.

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 PRELUDE 07

CURATORS’ NOTE

PRELUDE ‘07 is a mini-festival celebrating and discussing the very best

of new and unconventional theatre being created by NYC-based theatre
artists and companies. The event features over 20 short performances,
readings, open rehearsals, and talkbacks – with a focus on works in
progress for the upcoming 2007-08 season and beyond. PRELUDE ’07
gives audiences the rare chance to see the work of NYC’s most exciting
theatre in one place and to experience the developmental process of
contemporary NYC theatre artists.

Curated by Andy Horwitz, Geoffrey Jackson Scott and Frank Hentschker

Associate Producer, Meg Araneo; Production Assistant, Ruth Eglsaer

DISCUSSIONS

Uptown / Downtown
Moderator: David Cote
Participants: Sarah Benson, Adam Bock, Jim Nicola, and Alex Timbers

Playwright vs. Text

Moderator: Brook Stowe
Participants: Madeleine George, Richard Nelson, Eric Dyer, and Mac Wellman

Downtown/Race
Moderator: Jason Grote
Participants: James Scruggs, Thomas Bradshaw, David Henry Hwang, and Melanie Joseph

New Dramaturgy/New York

Participants: Morgan Jenness, Kristin Marting, and Norman Frisch

(L) Uchino Tadashi, co-curator of Spotlight Japan and Toshiki

Okada in post performance discussion at PRELUDE 07.
(Below) A Spotlight Japan post performance discussion with
Frank Hentschker, Uchino Tadashi, co-curator, playwrights
Toshiki Okada, Mikuni Yanaihara and Masataka Matsuda
and others at PRELUDE 07.
(Opposite) The Worshipped: Or Wreck of the Dictators, by
Rachel Shukert/Bushwick Hotel at PRELUDE 07.

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 PRELUDE 07

(Above, from L to R, from top to buttom) A video/talk on the subject of the practice of choreography by Annie-B Parson/
Big Dance Theatre at PRELUDE 07; Kameron Steele; Josh Fox; Kate Loewald, artistic director of the Play Company; Jason
Grote; Melanie Joseph; David Henry Hwang; James Scruggs in the Panel: Downtoen/Race at PRELUDE 07.
(Below, from top)Segal staff at PRELUDE 07; I Used To Be Curious (Loud) by 31 Down at PRELUDE 07.

(Above) Sherru Zahad And Her Arabian Knights, directed by Yvan Greenberg/Laboratory Theater at PRELUDE 07.
(Below) Spotlight Japan The Blue Bird by Mikuni Yanaihara and Dan Safer/Witness Relocation at PRELUDE 07.

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 PRELUDE 08
(Above, from top) Andrew Schneider in CHN01, directed by Andrew Schneider; Adam Lerman, Megan Tusing and
Ilan Bachrach in Sine Wave Goodbye, directed by Jamie Peterson/The Paper Industry; Chautauqua by The National
Theater of the United States of America; All at PRELUDE 08.

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 PRELUDE 08

DISCUSSIONS CURATORS’ NOTE

Between White Cubes and Black Boxes: Performance, Place & Context Thank you for joining us at this year’s festival and helping us celebrate
Moderator: Andy Horwitz and Geoffrey Jackson Scott (PRELUDE Curators) our 5th Anniversary. As you may have noticed, we’ve got a new look and
Participants: Raul Vincent Enriquez (Artist), we’re doing things a little differently. Approaching this year’s festival,
Bonnie Marranca (co-founder/Editor, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art),
we gave a lot of thought to what we wanted it to be, how we could serve
Paul Lazar (Co-Artistic Director, Big Dance Theater),
Debra Singer (Executive Director and Chief Curator, The Kitchen), the community, and what issues we wanted to address as curators.
RoseLee Goldberg (founder Performa, author) Throughout our discussions we kept returning to this idea of context and
place: specifically how does live performance in a theater differ from live
Producing Meaning: New Media, Technology, & the Role of Dramaturgy performance in a museum? How does context affect our perception and
Moderator: Peter Von Salis (Dramaturg) valuation of the work? How do we reinforce the idea that theater is - or
Participants: Marianne Weems (Artistic Director, The Builder’s Association),
can be - Art?
Jay Scheib (Director), Victor Weinstock (Director/Dramaturg),
Morgan von Prelle Pecelli (Artistic and Development Director for Emerging
Artists, 3LD Art & Technology Center) Realizing the scope of the task that lay ahead, we engaged a dramaturg
Mallory Catlett, Director/Dramaturg - Morgan von Prelle Pecelli - to guide and support our investigations. We
explored the ideas behind contemporary museum practice, the histories
Surreal Estate: Artists, Urban Development & the Future of New York of experimental theater, performance art, live art and the artists creating
Moderator: Jennifer Wright Cook (Executive Director, The Field)
Participants: Yehuda Duenyas (Founding Member of NTUSA), work “between the black box and the white cube.”
Robert Elmes (Founder of Galapagos)
Zannah Mass (Cultural Affairs Director, Two Trees Management), Living as we do in a hybrid, multidisciplinary, platform-agnostic,
Teresa Vasquez (Non-Profit Dest, NYC Economic Development Corporation)
on‑demand world, we decided that the question of context was so
important that we would overlay the entire festival with this idea: one
Building Work in Multiple Sites: Financing Artistic Work on the Road
Moderator: David Cote (Theater Editor, Time Out New York) might even look at PRELUDE ‘08 as a 4-day, interactive, durational
Participants: Eric Dyer (Founding Member of Radiohole), performance. From opening panel to final conversation, PRELUDE ‘08
Susan Feldman (Artistic Director, St. Ann’s Warehouse), will explore the spaces in and between the black box and the white
Cynthia Hedstrom (Producer/Director of Special Projects, The Wooster Group),
cube. The program is arranged in a series of themed “exhibitions” or
Caden Manson (Artistic Director, Big Art Group),
Kim Whitener (Producing Director, HERE Arts Center) “galleries” starting with the form most removed from traditional theater
- Second Life - and culminating in an exhibit of some of today’s finest
realist (little r) Theater: wordsmiths. The schedule is staggered to allow people to move more
Constructing & Reconstructing Time in Contemporary Performance Prac- freely from showing to showing. Rather than following each showing with
tice a discussion, we have structured the exhibitions to culminate in group
Moderator: Morgan von Prelle Pecelli conversations.
(Artistic and Development Director for Emerging Artists, 3LD Art & Technology
Center)
Participants: Eric Dyer (Founding Member of Radiohole), We hope you will move through this exhibition carefully and in its entirety,
Richard Foreman (Director/Designer/Playwright), engage with the artists and the work on display, join the conversations,
Vallejo Gantner (Artistic Director of Performance Space 122), meet the people and, most of all, enjoy the show.
Nello McDaniel (Principal Director, ARTS Action Research),
Jay Scheib (Director)
PRELUDE ‘08 Curators: Andy Horwitz, Geoffrey Jackson Scott and Frank
Hentschker.

(Above) Panel The New Theatre with George Hunka and others at PRELUDE 08. (Above) Adam Lerman, Megan Tusing, Ilan Bachrach, and Brian Smolin in Sine Wave Goodbye, directed by Jamie
Peterson/The Paper Industry

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 PRELUDE 08

(Opposite, L) Untitled Film Project, by Richard Foreman/The Bridge Project at PRELUDE 08 (R) Andy Horwitz
and Geoffrey Jackson Scott, curators of PRELUDE 08.
(Below) Brian Rogers and Claudia La Rocco in A Burrito Truck, by Raul Vincent Enriquez at PRELUDE 08.

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 PRELUDE 08

(Clockwise from far above R) BLIND.NESS, directed by Ivan Talijancic/Wax Factory; Neighbors, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; (From top) Farris Craddock, Neal Medlyn, and Carmine Covelli in Neal Medlyn’s The Passion of Kanye West, by Neal Medlyn; ASTRS,
BLIND.NESS, directed by Ivan Talijancic/Wax Factory; Ryan Kelly in T.T.I.D (Le Theatre Est Mort!), by Moving Theater; Ryan Kelly in by Joyce Cho; Ben Beckley, Ryosuke Yamada, and Lorraine Mattox in Americana Kamikaze, directed by Kenneth Collins, Temporary
T.T.I.D (Le Theatre Est Mort!), by Moving Theater; FLAUXCONCERT 20080925-27, by FLAUXCONCERT; Neal Medlyn’s The Passion Distortion; All at PRELUDE 08.
of Kanye West, by Neal Medlyn; All at PRELUDE 08.

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 PRELUDE 08

(From L to R, from top to bottom) Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins; Geoffrey Jackson Scott, curator of PRELUDE 08;
Andy Horwitz, curator of PRELUDE 08; Caden Manson; Marianne Weems; Kristin Marting; Jay Scheib; Okwui
Okpokwasili; Vallejo Gantner; Big Dance Theater in Artists in Conversation: Compositional Performance;
Panel Discussion at PRELUDE 08; Big Art Group in Artists in Conversation: Media Performance; Geschichtlos,
a work in progress, by Richard Maxwell/NYC Players at PRELUDE 08.
(Opposite, above two) Chautauqua by The National Theater of the United States of America; (Bottom)
Untitled Film Project, by Richard Foreman/The Bridge Project at PRELUDE 08.

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 PRELUDE 09
(Above, L) Map of Virtue, by Erin Courtney (Above, R) Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, directed by
Jay Scheib; Both at PRELUDE 09.

(Above) WHA!? Whatever Heaven Allows by Radiohole at PRELUDE 09.

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 PRELUDE 09

DISCUSSIONS CURATORS’ NOTE

Thank you for joining us for PRELUDE ’09: Ecologies, Economies and
Artists In Conversation: Digital
Moderator: Andy Horwitz (founder CULTUREBOT.ORG; PRELUDE 09 Co-Curator) Engagement. As we approached this year’s festival, we kept talking
Artists: Steve Cuiffo, John Jesurun, William Cusick and David Michalek about the characteristics of the current moment. Right now as you read
this, someone is saying more in 140 characters than we have said in
Artists In Conversation: Hybrid 207. Someone is using the iPhone they just bought to upload footage
Moderator: Morgan von Prelle Pecelli they just shot to a blog they just created. We are undergoing a profound
(Director of Development, PS122; PRELUDE 09 Co-Curator) and transformative renegotiation of experience and engagement - all
Artists: Adrienne Truscott (Choreographer), Dan Safer (Director, Witness Relocation),
Brian Rogers (Co-Founder The Chocolate Factory ), around us, all the time. As we looked at the work of PRELUDE artists this
Phil Soltanoff (Director, Mad Dog Experimental) year the question we came back to was, “how does this work reflect or
predict the new world into which we are hurtling at breakneck speed?”
Artists In Conversation: Political
Moderator: Claire Bishop (Art Historian & Critic) Seeking to build upon the porous and participatory structure of last
Artists: Marina Abramovic, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Aaron Landsman,
David Levine, and Andrew Dinwiddie year’s festival, we have left the format largely unchanged. Artists
and companies have again been curated into tracks. Whereas last
Artists In Conversation: Bricolage year we were focusing on disciplinary boundaries, this year artists
Moderator: Sarah Benson(Artistic Director, Soho Rep.) are grouped around loci of content, form and practice: Digital, Poetic,
Artists: Jay Scheib, Brooke O’Harra, Kara Feely, Judith Malina, and Eric Dyer Political, Bricolage, and Hybrid. Also making a return this year are the
Artists in Conversation, which unite the dynamic artists of each track in
Artists In Conversation: Poetics conversation with each other at the close of each day. We invite you to
Moderator: Geoffrey Jackson Scott
(Literary Associate, New York Theatre Workshop; PRELUDE 09 Co-Curator) join us for this unique opportunity to hear the artists informally discuss
Artists: Erin Courtney, Kristen Kosmas, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Christina Masciotti, how they create their work.

Our symposia investigations this year – Citizenship, Production, and

Symposium: Citizenship
Moderator: Arwen Lowbridge (PRELUDE 09 Associate Producer) Green – will be opportunities to move outside the work. Through each
Participants: Robert Zukerman (Theater Program Director, NYSCA), we hope to foster dialogues about the changing relationship of art and
Justin Krebs (Artistic Director, The Tank), culture, new ways of engaging our political muscles, new modes in
Sheila Lewandowski (Co-Founder & Executive Director, The Chocolate Factory) producing, and new strategies in greener creation. Rounding out the bill
this year is our annual international collaboration, this year featuring
Symposium: Production Spotlight Korea, and a live streaming of the National Arts Journalism
Moderator: Hélène Lesterlin (EMPAC)
Participants: Vallejo Gantner (Artistic Director, PS122), Project summit on “Cultural Coverage in the 21st Century.”
Kristin Marting (Artistic Director HERE),
Jeff Hnilicka (Co-Founder, FEAST) In an attempt to augment the festival’s transparency and engagement,
we are inviting those on twitter to participate in the various symposia and
Symposium: Green dialogues via the hashtag #preludenyc. Use it to ask questions of the
Moderator: Lisa Phillips
Participants: Harriet Taub (Executive Director, Materials for The Arts), artists, make suggestions, and get more information about the various
Jonah Bokaer (Choreographer and Founder Chez Bushwick/Center for goings on. The goal is to offer a wide swath of experiences and chances
Performance Research), for you to interact with the artists and with each other.
Jeremy James Pickard (Co-Founder Superhero Clubhouse),
Michael Johnson-Chase (Green Jobs Program Director, SolarOne)
We hope you will look with one eye towards the imagined future and the
other on the rapidly receding past.
National Arts Journalism Summit
Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California
PRELUDE ‘09 Curators:
Andy Horwitz, Geoffrey Jackson Scott,
Morgan von Prelle Pecelli and Frank Hentschker.

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 PRELUDE 09

(Below) Selective Memory,

directed by Brian Rogers/
The Chocolate Factory at
PRELUDE 09.

(L) Opening Panel: The

PRELUDE 6x6 with (from
left) Esther Robinson,
Andrew Schneider,
Yehuda Duenyas, and
Bonnie Marranca at
PRELUDE 09

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 PRELUDE 09

(Above, from top) Neal Medlyn and Adrienne Truscott in Bermuda ($$), directed by Adrienne Truscott; Benjamin Forster and
Black-Eyed Susan in Liz One, directed by John Jesurun; Both at PRELUDE 09
(Opposite, from L to R, top to bottom) Yehuda Duenyas; Bonnie Marranca; Tairone Bastien; Andrew Schneider; Esther
Robinson; Wayne Ashley; Sheila Lewandowski; Justin Krebs; Jeff Hnilicka; Kristin Marting; ;Hélène Lesterlin; Robert
Zuckerman; David Levine; Brooke O’Harra; Kara Feely; Andrew Dinwiddie; Matthew Maher; William Cusick; Dan Safer in Panel
at PRELUDE 09. Symposium: Green with Lisa Phillips and others at PRELUDE 09.

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 PRELUDE 09

(Clockwise from top)

Marina Abramovic in Artist
in Discussion; Marina
Abramovic in Artist in
Discussion; Art History with
(Above from top) Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, directed by Jay Scheib; LA Party, Benefits, by The Bruce high
directed by Phil Soltanoff/Mad Dog Experimental; Jay Scheib in the talkback after Quality Foundation; Gun
Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, directed by Jay Scheib; All at PRELUDE 09. Sale, by Object Collection;
(L, from top) Andy Horwitz, curator of PRELUDE 09; Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Judith Malina in Artists in
curator of PRELUDE 09; Geoffrey Jackson Scott, curator of PRELUDE 09; Phil Conversation: Bricolage; All
Soltanoff; Eric Dyer; Eric Dyer and Jay Scheib in Artists in Conversation: Bricolage. at PRELUDE 09.

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 PRELUDE 10
(R) Liz Sargent in Botanica, directed by Jim Findlay;
(Below) Zoetrope, by HOI POLLOI & Sylvan Oswald. Both
at PRELUDE 10.

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 PRELUDE 10

ROUND TABLES CURATORS’ NOTE

PRELUDE 10 asks a blunt question that straddles funding, audience

Communication: Where Exchange Becomes Communitas
Participants: Robert Quillen Camp, Rachel Chavkin (the TEAM), Alec Duffy (Hoi Polloi), and disciplinary tensions pervasive in our contemporary performance
Trajal Harrell, Karinne Keithly (Joyce Cho), sector: “Why Does Live Matter?” What is its purpose? How do we
S. Oswald (Hoi Polloi and Play a Journal of Plays) measure its value to individuals, to communities, and to that collector of
Joined by: SMallory Catlett (SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA Curator), Caridad Svich (Playwright), the dead - History? Three themes over three days drive our investigation:
Christina deRoos (Chez Bushwick), Kevin Doyle (Sponsored by Nobody)
Communication, Provocation, and Simulation.
Provocation: Attempts To Activate Overstimulated City Dwellers
Participants: Penny Arcade, Jennifer Wright Cook (The Field), Jim Findlay, Since live art is as much about the audience as it is about the artist,
Ishmael Houston-Jones, Aaron Landsman, Kristin Marting (HERE), we start each day with participation. Our afternoon “Activity Sessions”
Julie Atlas Muz, Jon Stancato (Stolen Chair) challenge you to question yourself and the world beyond, formulate
Joined by: Young Jean Lee answers, experience new tools, and create your own artworks with the
curated artists leading the sessions.
Simulation: Living The Simulacra
Participants: RKimon Keramidas, Reid Farrington, Andrew Schneider, Reggie Watts
Joined by: Kevin Cunningham (3LD Art & Technology Center), The evening “Performances” return audience members to the
Tanya Selvaratnam (performer/producer ), contemporary habit of distanced observation. But don’t get too
Megan Sprenger (Dance Theatre Workshop and mvworks), comfortable: these artists provoke us to consider how live performance
Carla Peterson (Dance Theatre Workshop), Eric Dyer (Radiohole)
can regain its relevance to society, unsettle perception and habits, and
engage organically in the digital age.

To conclude each day, we push you to the edge of voyeurism by closing

you out of the conversation entirely. During the nightly “Round Tables”
you will witness the artists from each day’s sessions discuss and debate
the practical & philosophical ramifications of each day’s theme, joined by
selected peers.

Looping back around and returning us to that first participatory moment

of the day, each night we journey to the local watering-hole to continue
the discussion and remind ourselves of the world beyond our white
cubes and black boxes.

Finally, we know it would be impossible to remain relevant in the lives of

our audiences if we ignored our daily engagement with the socializing
(Above)The Cleaning Lady Has Something to Say (Part 1), directed by Julie Atlas Muz; (Below) Mission Drift, directed by
Rachel Chavkin/The Team. Both at PRELUDE 10. forces of virtual technology. To facilitate your virtual participation, we
have also included QR codes in this program that you can scan with
your digital device after downloading a QR Scanner application. The QR
codes will take you directly to web content relevant to the related artists
or projects and open up new avenues for creativity and participation,
including our Facebook page and Live Writers’ Wiki.

We hope you join us in the flesh and in the virtual for all three days.

The PRELUDE.10 Team

Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Frank Hentschker, Arwen Lowbridge,
and Mashinka Firunts

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 PRELUDE 10

(Below) Mission Drift, directed by Rachel Chavkin/The Team at PRELUDE 10.

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 PRELUDE 10

(L) Round Table: Communication: where exchange

becomes communitas with Alec Duffy and others;
(Below) Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, curator of
PRELUDE 10

(L) Round Table: Communication: where exchange

becomes communitas with Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
and others; (Below) Robert Quillen Camp in That
Black Gravity, written by Robert Quillen Camp at
PRELUDE 10.

(Above) Liz Sargent; (R) Liz Sargent and Chet

Mazur; (Below) Chet Mazur inBotanica, directed by
Jim Findlay at PRELUDE 10.

(L) Round Table: Communication: where exchange

becomes communitas with Alec Duffy and others;
(Below) Ryan Eggensperger in That Black Gravity,
written by Robert Quillen Camp at PRELUDE 10.

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 PRELUDE 11
(Above) Gus Solomons, Jr. in Complete Works (2009/2011), (Above and below) World of Wires, directed by Jay
by Nina Beier at PRELUDE 11. Scheib at PRELUDE 11.

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 PRELUDE 11

DISCUSSIONS CURATORS’ NOTE

Hello and welcome to PRELUDE.11!

Repurposing
Moderator: Claire Bishop
Participants: Rob Fitterman (poet), Richard Move (choreographer/performer) In its short life, the PRELUDE festival has taken on a number of roles—
Julia Robinson (art historian) collection point for exciting New York work, sampler-platter of the coming
season, and site for academic and artistic interaction. This is the eighth
Text As Texture edition of PRELUDE, and it marks a departure from previous years by
Moderator: Helen Shaw focusing on live performance from an interdisciplinary perspective. For
Participants: Otso Huopaniemi, Jeff Jones, Sibyl Kempson, and Mac Wellman
the first time, we are using the James Gallery at the Graduate Center as
We Present A Presentation well as the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as venues for the festival, so
Moderator: Rob Marcato that we can juxtapose and compare two types of performance space –
Participants: Pablo Helguera, Jake Hooker, and Claudia La Rocco the “white cube” and the “black box”.

The dialogue is not simply between experimental theatrical production

and visual art performance, however. Also included in this year’s
PRELUDE are representatives of new tendencies in poetry and
contemporary dance. In our months of planning, we’ve discovered
cultural and pragmatic differences that divide these related disciplines,
but we’ve also been happy to uncover the extent to which different
mediums frequently address similar issues. We have identified three
main areas around which these common themes converge: Repurposing,
Text as Texture, and We Present a Presentation.

The performances are scheduled to alternate between the James Gallery

and the Martin Segal Theatre Center. In the evenings, there will be a bar
in the James Gallery, illuminated by David Levine’s YES (2011).

Each day begins with a panel discussion featuring the performers and
experts, and where time allows, performances will be followed by a
discussion with the artists. But our job isn’t done until audience and
performers are all in a room debating what they have seen – so we look
forward to seeing you here over the next three days and over a glass of
wine at our closing party, at the Gershwin Hotel, on Friday October 14th!

(Above) Love.abz, directed by Otso Huopaniemi at PRELUDE 11; The PRELUDE Team
(Row below and opposite) Rob Erickson in Mangle Me Slowmo, by Lumberob at PRELUDE 11.
Claire Bishop, Frank Hentschker, Rob Marcato, Helen Shaw

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 PRELUDE 11

(Above) Panel: Text as Texture with (from left) Helen Shaw, Jeffrey M. Jones, Otso Huopaniemi,
Sibyl Kempson, and Mac Wellman at PRELUDE 11

(Above, from left) Helen Shaw,Claire Bishop, and Rob Marcato. curators of PRELUDE 11.

(Above, L) Pablo Helguera and Jake Hooker in Panel We Present a Presentation. (R) Robert
Fitterman in Robs, by Robert Fitterman; both at PRELUDE 11.

Otso Huopaniemi Mac Wellman Sibyl Kempson Jeffrey M. Jones

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 PRELUDE 11

(Above) THISISITISTHISIT (Shit Shit Shit): A Map of the Known World, directed by Jake Hooker/The Plastic Arts at PRELUDE 11.

(Above) Audience in James Gallery, CUNY at PRELUDE 11.

(Above, from top) Yes (2011), by David Levine; (Above, from top)THISISITISTHISIT (Shit Shit Shit): A Map
Talkback after Half Straddle’s Seagull (Thinking of of the Known World, directed by Jake Hooker/The Plastic
You) with Caleb Hammons; Joseph Beuys in NYC, Arts; Seagull (Thinking of You), directed by Tina Satter/
by Jackson Pollock Bar; Paul Lazar in When A Priest Half Straddle; both at PRELUDE 11.
Marries A Witch, by Suzanne Bocanegra & Paul
Lazar; All at PRELUDE 11.

(Above) World of Wires, directed by Jay Scheib at PRELUDE 11.

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 PRELUDE 12
(Above) Dave Malloy, Mikeah Ernest Jennings, Eliza Bent and Nikki Calonge in Black Wizard /
Blue Wizard, by Eliza Bent & Dave Malloy at PRELUDE 12.

(Above)Jack Ferver in All of a Sudden, by Jack Ferver in collaboration with Joshua Lubin-Levy at
PRELUDE 12.

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 PRELUDE 12

DISCUSSIONS CURATORS’ NOTE

Hello and welcome to PRELUDE.12, the ninth annual PRELUDE Festival at the
Imitation Of Participation Martin E. Segal Theatre Center!
Moderator: Caleb Hammons
Participants: Claire Bishop (scholar), Lear deBessonet (artist),
Andy Horwitz (artist / writer), Aaron Landsman (artist), Niegel Smith (artist) Thank you so much for joining us. We hope we have furnished you with a feast of
provoking, ravishing, bizarre, complicated and blithely entertaining work—enough
to delight the most voracious performance-lover. As always, PRELUDE offers
The Future Of The Cinema Is The Stage its banquet in appetizer portions: snippets, readings and works-in-progress, all
Moderators: Julie Talen (scholar) and Helen Shaw
Participants: Caden Manson (Artist), Tony Torn (Artist), Marianne Weems (Artist) & others tempting morsels that we think will pique your appetite for the seasons to come.

This year, as we looked for works by artists we think define (and rewrite the
definition of) the New York scene, we were struck by an oxymoron. There
was a strong presence of absence. Many of our most treasured creators,
pressed by funding exigencies and a dependence on touring, must work far
from home, leaving a hole at the center of any New York season. Emerging
makers are creating in spite of an absence of space, time, money and a major
premiere. There are other disappearances too, as theater and dance artists
increasingly create work deliberately void of live components. These are not new
circumstances or strategies, yet any true survey of the current experimental New
York moment must make some mention of these intentional and unintentional
lacunae.

Throughout the festival we will be investigating these absences and their

residual/ reactionary presences, how they are changing our notions of live
performance, the practice thereof and the participation therein. We have asked
a slew of artists to create and perform manifestos for 2012, so that we can hear
how others fully affirm art’s presence in the modern wilderness. We will explore
the influence of cinema on the avant-garde stage and the current uses of film
and video within what we still call “live” practice. We will look at the links between
participation, authenticity and imitation. We will try to understand the continuing
role music plays in the art of live performance—the way it joyfully reaffirms ritual
connections at some cellular level.

Performances are scheduled to alternate between the Graduate Center’s

Elebash Recital Hall and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, but look for us
(Above, L) Andrew Champlin in The Problem with Dancing, by Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People; (R) Spoken Karaoke, a elsewhere as well. Niegel Smith has created a walk just for PRELUDE—a spiritual
participatory event, directed by Annie Dorsen at PRELUDE 12.
(Below) Raise Your Voice in Medieval Counterpoint, directed by Julia May Jonas/Nellie Tinder at PRELUDE 12.
journey through the streets around CUNY—and our partner, the Gershwin Hotel,
will also host our two loudest offerings: Adam Feldman curates an Avant-Cabaret
Spectacular on the night of October 3rd, while our performance-heavy closing
night party will feature a DJ set from the singular Lumberob.

None of this will be complete, though, without your participation. We hope that
you’ll engage with our Critical Partners writing on Culturebot (culturebot.org)
and Contemporary Performance (contemporaryperformance.org), and that
you’ll continue the analysis, in a slightly less academic vein, over beers at the
Gershwin. Whichever your chosen venue, we hope you feel as we do that the
programming can only ever be half the conversation; we rely on you to turn it into
a dialogue.

The PRELUDE Team:

Caleb Hammons & Helen Shaw, and Frank Hentschker

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 PRELUDE 12

(Below) Audience at the Segal Theater, CUNY at PRELUDE 12.

(Opposite) Eliza Bent and Nikki Calonge in Black Wizard / Blue Wizard, by Eliza Bent & Dave Malloy

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 PRELUDE 12

(Above L) Jay Scheib in Jay Scheib: Untitled Ecologies, by Jay Scheib &
Co. (Bottom L) Tony Torn and Richard Foreman in Untitled, by Richard
Foreman (R) A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the
Death of Walt Disney, by Lucas Hnath, directed by Sarah Benson; All at
PRELUDE 12.

(R) Marty Brown in Furry, by

William Burke at PRELUDE 12.

(L) Andrew Champlin in The

Problem with Dancing, by
Miguel Gutierrez and the
Powerful People (R) Leah
Nanako Winkler in Work Hard
Play Harder: a manifesto by a (From top) Helen Shaw and
next generation theatre maker, Caleb Hammons, curators
directed by Leah Nanako of PRELUDE 12; Audience
Winkler/Everywhere Theatre at the Segal Theater, CUNY;
Group at PRELUDE 12. Furry, by William Burke at
PRELUDE 12.

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 PRELUDE 12

(Above) Tony Torn and Julie Atlas Muz in Ubu Sings

Ubu, directed by Tony Torn at PRELUDE 12.

(Above)The House of Von Macrame, by Joshua Conkel (Above) Helen Shaw and Caleb Hammons, curators of
at PRELUDE 12. PRELUDE 12

(R) Audience at the Gershwin Hotel at PRELUDE 12.

(Below) Avant-Cabaret Spectacular at the Gershwin
Hotel at PRELUDE 12.

(Above) Frank Hentschker in River of Gruel, Pile of Pigs: The Requisite Gesture[s] of Narrow Approach, directed by Sibyl
Kempson

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 PRELUDE 13
(Top) The Universe is a Small Hat, by César Alvarez and Sarah Benson; (Bottom L) Elijah Green, directed by Andrew
Ondrejcak (Bottom R) Andrew Schneider in YOUARENOWHERE, by Andrew Schneider; All at PRELUDE 13.

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 PRELUDE 13

DISCUSSIONS CURATORS’ NOTE

Hello and welcome to PRELUDE.13, the tenth annual PRELUDE Festival at the
The Brooklyn Commune Project Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Collaborating Artists: Gelsey Bell, Abigail Browde, Annie Dorsen, Shonni Enelow, Andy Horwitz,
Carla Peterson, Risa Shoup, Michael Silverstone, Clyde Valentine, and more
A “prelude,” according to Webster, is “an introductory performance, action, or
event preceding and preparing for the principal or a more important matter.” It is
Performing New York City: intrinsic, then, that the direction in which to plan and experience a prelude is with
How Theater and Performance Can Survive the Next Decade sights set forward. Each October for the past ten years, PRELUDE has introduced
Moderator: David Levine New York artists and audiences to the season ahead. This season, as a slight
Participants: Sarah Benson, Claire Bishop, Caleb Hammons, Frank Hentschker, Andy Horwitz,
Rob Marcato, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, and Helen Shaw.
departure, we approached the occasion of PRELUDE.13 as a critical juncture; a
moment to consider what came before, chart the evolutions that brought us into
The Willing Participant the now, and to launch inquiries into where we can go from here. The next ten
Moderator: Gavin Kroeber years are our “more important matter.”
Participants: Adam Horowitz, Melanie Joseph, Aaron Landsman, Todd Shalom, and Niegel Smith
What started a decade ago as a way to facilitate exchange between current
scholarly and artistic practices rooted in New York City no longer binds these
Re: (No Subject) proceedings by the roles we play and the spaces in which we play them. The
Moderator: Caleb Hammons PRELUDE of today is a collective laboratory of local artistic process, celebrating
Participants: Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sibyl Kempson, Max Posner, and inquiring into the unique creative forces that live and thrive in this city.
and Anne Washburn
PRELUDE.13, subtitled FORWARD, is a place to discover and engage in what
voices, ideas, and debates are colliding to shape the near and distant future of
contemporary theatre and performance in NYC. In celebration of the Festival’s
(Below )#HASHTAG: A Performance Art Performance, by Chris Tyler at PRELUDE 13
first decade, PRELUDE.13 also recognizes and reflects on the community of
artists, audience, scholars, and other participants who have contributed to a
decade of discourse.

Events are scheduled to alternate between the Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal
Theatre and the Elebash Recital Hall, but be attentive to unexpected encounters
in unusual sites. If the zeitgeist does in fact point us to the core of the present
disposition, a new elocution will emerge in the next decade surrounding social,
site-based, and participatory practices in the theatrical realm. As a (willing)
participant in this year’s events, you may find yourself in hallways with strangers,
processed for access to an alien spacecraft, exploring the geography of your own
psyche, asked to sleep during the performance, or even (finally!) in Brooklyn (for
the closing night party — transportation provided).

Whether you have arrived at PRELUDE as an artist, spectator, scholar, or any

combination thereof, over the next three days you are part of a communitas.
Onstage, online, on-screen, on the page, on the streets, or with a drink in hand
at our closing night Tenth Anniversary Celebration, we implore you to observe,
engage, commune, and critique with us. Our aim this week is for collision – with
both the work and the people around us. Our duty thereafter is to carry this spirit,
our experiments, and our inquiries FORWARD.

Thank you for participating in this milestone PRELUDE year!

- The PRELUDE Team,

Caleb Hammons & Frank Hentschker

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 PRELUDE 13

(Above) The People L.E.S by The Big Art Group at PRELUDE 13 (Above) Taylor Mac in 24-Decade Concert Series of the History of Popular Music: The
1850s (An Open Rehearsal), by Taylor Mac at PRELUDE 13

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 PRELUDE 13

(L) Alan Smithee Directed This Play by Big

Dance Theatre at PRELUDE 13;
(Middle L) Taylor Mac and pianist in
24-Decade Concert Series of the History
of Popular Music: The 1850s (An Open
Rehearsal), by Taylor Mac (Middle R)
Jerome Ellis in Aaron/Marie, by Jerome
Ellis and James Harrison Monaco at
PRELUDE 13.
(Bottom L) Paul Zimet in This Was
the End, by Mallory Catlett/Restless
NYC (Bottom R) Andrew Schneider in
YOUARENOWHERE, by Andrew Schneider

(Above) PRELUDE 13 Opening Panel How Theater and Performance can Survive the Next
Decade with (from left) Frank Hentschker, Sarah Benson, Caleb Hammons, Claire Bishop, Andy
Horwitz, Rob Marcato, Helen Shaw, and Geoffrey Jackson Scott.

(Below)The Universe is a Small

Hat by César Alvarez and Sarah
Benson; (R) Radoslaw Konopka,
Liza Wade Green and Andrew
Goldberg in Experiment #2 ½
(PRELUDE), by The Institute for
Psychogeographic Adventure
(IPA) at PRELUDE 13.

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 PRELUDE 13

(R) Sarah Benson, Caleb Hammons, and

Claire Bishop
(Below) Panel The Willing Participant
with Gavin Kroeber and others at
PRELUDE 13.
(Above)That Poor Dream, by the Assembly at PRELUDE 13.

(Above) Cynthia Hopkins in A Living Documentary, by Cynthia Hopkins at PRELUDE 13.

(Below) The Universe is a Small Hat by César Alvarez and Sarah Benson at PRELUDE 13

(Above) Audience in the Corridor; all at PRELUDE 13.

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 THE PRELUDE TEAMS

THE PRELUDE TEAMS 2009

Curators Andy Horwitz
Geoffrey Jackson Scott

2005 Frank Hentschker

Curator/Dramaturg Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
Curators Frank Hentschker
Producer Allison Lyman
Sarah Benson
Producer/Marketing Rebecca Sheahan
MESTC, Director of Administration Jan Stenzel
Associate Producer Arwen Lowbridge
Stage Managers Monica Moore
Graphic Designer George Bixby
Sarah Bishop-Stone
Web Designer Kimon Keramidas
Intern Amanda Wright
2006 2010
Curators Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
Curators Frank Hentschker
Frank Hentschker
Sarah Benson
Producer Arwen Lowbridge
MESTC, Director of Administration Jan Stenzel
Dramaturg Mashinka Firunts
Associate Producer Amanda Wright
Spotlight Curator Mallory Catlett
Stage Manager Ryan Parow
Graphic Designer George Bixby
Poster Designer Alex Irklievsky
Web Designer Kimon Keramidas
Postcard Designer Brendan Dugan
Co-technical Directors Brad Krumholz
2007
(Above) Sipiwe Moyo in Pink
Brendan Regimbal Melon Joy by Katherine Brook/
Curators Andy Horwitz
Tele-Violet at PRELUDE 13.
Production Manager Ruth Wikler-Luker
Geoffrey Jackson Scott
On-site Coordinator Melissa F. Moschitto
Frank Hentschker
2011
Associate Producers Meg Araneo
Curators Claire Bishop
Ruth Eglsaer
Rob Marcato
Graphic Designer Phyllis B. Dooney
Helen Shaw
Stage Managers Sarah Hughes
Frank Hentschker
Clifton K. Cahall
Producer Caleb Hammons
2008
Marketing & publibity Rayya El Zein
Curators Andy Horwitz
Anais Michel
Geoffrey Jackson Scott
Ruth Wikler-Luker
Frank Hentschker
Technical Directors Tim Fodness
Producers Allison Lyman
Brad Krumholz
Rebecca Sheahan
Brendan Regimbal
Dramaturg Morgan von Prelle Pecelli
Production Coordinator Lisa McGinn
Art Director George Bixby
Stage Managers Rachel Parks
Greg Redlawsk
(Above) Rob Erickson in
Mangle Me Slowmo, by
Lumberob at PRELUDE
11.

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 THE PRELUDE TEAMS
2012 2014
Curators Caleb Hammons Curators Chloë Bass
Helen Shaw Jackie Sibblies Drury
Frank Hentschker Sarah Rose Leonard
Producer Rachel Silverman Allison Lyman
PRELUDE Director of Administration Rebecca Sheahan Producer Sarah Stites
Company Manager Lauren DiGiulio Associate Producer Mary Spadoni
Technical Directors Tim Fodness Executic Director, the Segal Center Frank Hentschker
Brad Krumholz Managing Director, the Segal Center Rebecca Sheahan
Brendan Regimbal Segal Center Associate, the Segal Center Brad Burgess
Design Coordinator Sarah Rose Leonard Design Coordinator Michael LoCicero
Production Coordinator Lisa McGinn Graphic Designers Kaitlin Meyers
Stage Managers Greg Redlawsk Yu Chien Liu
Mary Spadoni Web Designer Alex Weiss-Hills
Company Manager/Outreach Ruth Wikler-Luker Party Producers/ Social Media Managers Shelley Carter
2013 Emilyn Kowaleski
Curators Caleb Hammons Technical Directors Peter Mills-Weiss
Frank Hentschker Carl Wipple
Producer Rachel Silverman Stage Managers Eric Marlin
PRELUDE Director of Administration Rebecca Sheahan Greg Redlawsk
Alt. Space Production Coordinator Sarah Bishop-Stone Company Manager Yu Chien Liu
Production Coordinator Lindsey Turteltaub Volunteer Coordinator Sam French
Production Assistants Brad Burgess Producer’s Assistant Joy Arab
Lisa Szolovits Blake Bishton

Company Manager Shelley Carter Front of House Staff Camille Gaume

Sound Technician Michael Costagliola

Web Developer Kimon Keramidas
Party Producer Sarah Rose Leonard
Technical Directors Peter Mills-Weiss
Matt Romein
Stage Managers Greg Redlawsk
Mary Spadoni
Design Coordinator Sarah Stites

(Above) Audience in James Gallery, CUNY at PRELUDE 13.

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 CREDITS

PHOTO CREDITS

pg.29 Tasja Keetman, 2005

PRELUDE Photographers pg.30 Rachel Roberts, 2008
2005 Tasja Keetman www.tasjakeetman.com
pg.31 Irina Rozovsky, 2011
2006 Julieta Cervantes www.julietacervantes.com
pg.32 Tasja Keetman, 2005
2007 Julien Jourdes www.jourdes.com
pg.33 Tasja Keetman, 2005
2008 Rachel Roberts www.rachelrobertsphoto.com
pg.35 R: Julien Jourdes, 2007
2009 Justin Bernhaut www.bernhaut.com
L: Rachel Roberts, 2008
2010 Justin Bernhaut www.bernhaut.com
pg.36 Irina Rozovsky, 2011
John DesRoches www.johndesrochesphotography.com
Julien Jourdes, 2007
2011 Irina Rozovsky www.irinar.com
pg.38 R: Irina Rozovsky, 2011
2012 Julieta Cervantes www.julietacervantes.com
L: Julien Jourdes, 2007
2013 Julieta Cervantes www.julietacervantes.com Pg.39 Julien Jourdes, 2007
pg.41 Julieta Cervantes, 2012
Julieta Cervantes, 2012
headers Drawings by Michael Arthur, 2008
[pg.7,8, 25,39,124, 128] pg.43 Julieta Cervantes, 2013
pg.11 Julieta Cervantes, 2013 pg.44 Rachel Roberts, 2008
pg.12 Julieta Cervantes, 2013 pg.46 NTOK: Courtesy of the artist
pg.14 Irina Rozovsky, 2011 Rachel Roberts, 2008
pg. 15 Justin Bernhaut, 2009 pg.49 Julieta Cervantes, 2012
pg.16 Top L: Justin Bernhaut, 2009 pg.51 Julieta Cervantes, 2006
R: Justin Bernhaut, 2009 pg.52-57 Tasja Keetman, 2005
Bottom L: Irina Rozovsky, 2011 pg.55 Sarah Benson: Frank Hentschker
R: Julieta Cervantes, 2012 pg.58-63 Julieta Cervantes, 2006
pg.17 Rachel Roberts, 2008 pg.64-69 Julien Jourdes. 2007
pg.18 Julieta Cervantes, 2013 pg.70-79 Rachel Roberts, 2008
pg.19 Rachel Roberts, 2008 pg.80-89 Justin Bernhaut, 2009
pg.20 Rachel Roberts, 2008 pg.90-97 Justin Bernhaut, 2010
pg.21 Rachel Roberts, 2008 pg.99-105 Irina Rozovsky, 2011
pg.22 Irina Rozovsky, 2011 pg.106-115 Julieta Cervantes, 2012
pg.23 Rachel Roberts, 2008 pg.102 Claire Bishop: Courtesy of the artist
pg.24 Justin Bernhaut, 2009 pg.116-125 Julieta Cervantes, 2013
Julieta Cervantes, 2013 pg.126 Irina Rozovsky, 2011
Julien Jourdes, 2007 pg.127 Julieta Cervantes, 2013
pg.26-27 Tasja Keetman, 2005 pg.129 Irina Rozovsky, 2011
pg.28 Tasja Keetman, 2005 pg.130 Irina Rozovsky, 2011

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