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This program is co-presented off-site with The Invisible Dog Art Center


As part of the research for their performance work The Dumps, and as an extension of their Technical Residency at CPR and co-presented with The Invisible Dog Art Center, Simone Aughterlony and Jen Rosenblit organize In Our Decline, a symposium aroused by an urgent and necessary un-doing of things – aging, un-worlding, decay, ruination, and collapse.

The day-long symposium features performative activations, visual art offerings, and public conversation and engagement with a range of artists, curators, and scholars including A.K. Burns, Caroline Dionne, Jack Halberstam, Ryan McNamara, Felipe Ribeiro, and Avgi Saketopoulou, along with performances by lab participants who will join Rosenblit and Aughterlony in their research, including Effie Bowen, devynn emory, Raja Feather Kelly, Stephen Morrison, Connor Voss, Joseph Wegmann, and Colin Self.

View the Program

This program is an extension of a Spring 2025 Technical Residency with Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony in March 2025.

Accessibility note: The Invisible Dog Art Center can be accessed via a ramp upon request. Please note the restroom is not ADA accessible.


SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

12–12:45 PM | Caroline Dionne and Felipe Ribeiro

Caroline Dionne and Felipe Ribeiro share research and conversation.

Caroline Dionne: In Plain View
Caroline Dionne offers insights from In Plain View, a reflection on the transformation of Freshkills from landfill to landscape, where she explores the convergence of contemporary art and environmental awareness, emphasizing the fragile balance between nature and human impact. Through a series of immersive works, Dionne encourages the audience to contemplate on community, aging, decay, and ruin through the environmental repercussions of modern society.

Felipe Ribeiro: Revolving Actions
Undoing becomes the operative concept for Revolving Actions, a series of site-specific performances developed since 2018. The actions happen in three historical sites, equidistant 1000 kilometers from one another, which mark a triangle in the map of Brazil. At first, studies of movements and compositions of soils subjects the performer’s body to enduring situations of physical instability, which then expands into a non-leading power of agency.

1–2 PM | Jack Halberstam: Unworlding: Anarchitecture After Everything

Empires have often been described in terms of a rise and a fall, a glorious era and an ignominious defeat. This way of describing power, inevitably, allows for mythologies of a once great era that was here but has now gone…but could rise again. In this talk, Unworlding: Anarchitecture After Everything, Jack Halberstam will push back on the model of rising and falling and stay with decline, collapse, ruination. The answer to ruination, moreover, lies less in repair and more in destitution. He will offer a destituting logic for trans bodies, for city spaces and for political futures. We will not look back longingly for a time past but nor will we scan ahead for a better future. Instead, through art works focused on unbuilding, unmaking and precarity, we can think together about our decline and how to embrace it.

2–2:15 PM | 1st Laboratory Performative Activation

Effie Bowen, Stephen Morrison, Joseph Wegmann, Raja Feather Kelly, Connor Voss, devynn emory, simone aughterlony, Jen Rosenblit, and Colin Self.

2:45–3:30 PM | A.K. Burns: What is Perverse is Liquid

What is Perverse is Liquid explores metaphors, qualities, and properties of water such as transmission, transformation, liquid assets, leaks, and water’s essential role in the cycle of life and death. The work is structured as a series of interfaces including peepholes, portholes, computer screens, and other visual “leaks.”

3:30–4 PM | Ryan McNamara: live ruination choreo

A live time lapse. The artist uses everything available; a history of past works, the laboratory artists, the panelists, the theories, the space, microphones, chairs and the public to speculate on aughterlony and Rosenblit`s yet-to-be-made performance, The Dumps. Considering ruins and wreckage this entertaining offering rearranges the room, disorients our focus and leaves us to reflect on what we are left with, our inheritance and our accumulation.

4–5 PM | Avgi Saketopoulou: On the militancy of resisting the reparative: wound and confusional aesthetics

What does it take to make a determined and clear turn towards the anti-reparative? What resources are available to us for such a move, and what are the stakes of adopting a traumatophilic approach to what has already been broken in us and in the world? Drawing on Carolina Mendonça’s performance Zones of Resplendence, Saketopoulou discusses dispossession not as liability but as opening up to the birthing of collectives that do not labor towards the healing of wounds but towards a certain kind of militancy. Key to this militancy is an aesthetic of confusion, which works by frustrating the impulse to grasp what's enigmatic about our wounds and our response to them. Confusional aesthetics are central to art we may think of as ethically sadistic, art that engages us by drawing us into the wound.

5–5:15 PM | 2nd Laboratory Performative Activation

Effie Bowen, Stephen Morrison, Joseph Wegmann, Raja Feather Kelly, Connor Voss, devynn emory, simone aughterlony, Jen Rosenblit, and Colin Self.

5:15–6 PM | Roundtable and open mics with symposium participants and the public


ABOUT THE DUMPS

The Dumps is an extensive research and performance project by Simone Aughterlony and Jen Rosenblit that confronts architectural ruination against a backdrop of the capitalist drive for renewal. Departing from Jack Halberstam’s theory around Un-Worlding and The Aesthetics of Collapse, the project considers an erotics associated with abandoned architecture, often flagging or gesturing toward decline. What is it that gets lost and who do we lose amidst a constant drive to rebuild and refurbish? Is it love for or fear of ruins that determine the drive for futurity based on ownership, heated floors, privatized and insulated views, and the eventual promise of accumulated abundance?

By way of weathered, eroded, collapsing and abandoned architectures, the work refocuses erotics, sex, and sexuality as a public affair. The Dumps is not a site to disregard but an abundance of situations to be reckoned with. In the end, The Dumps might evict us, liberate us, even emancipate us from the promise of progress, not through clarity but through the aesthetics of confusion.

Through the creation of the work, Rosenblit and Aughterlony will host gatherings for local artists in each city where they are in residence, methodically articulating a further unwinding, undoing, aging, and decay associated with the research proposition itself and in resistance to further world-making. Acknowledging that the proposition of collapse is riddled with contradiction amidst the effort to speculate on futurity, in this context, to undo, we must first do, build, arrange, and organize as a way to initiate a focus towards the un-worlding and take stock of all that we have inherited.


IN OUR DECLINE

In Our Decline is a symposium taking place in NYC, nestled between residencies in Brooklyn at The Invisible Dog Art Center and CPR – Center for Performance Research, and positioned site-specifically in the well visited, dwelled, lingered, preserved, and beloved Invisible Dog Art Center, its industrial space, and the vertical stacking of a constantly eroding New York City. With the imminent closing of this community space at 51 Bergen Street, the work also takes on a necessary speculation of demolition in relation to this community space, excavating a promise of collision as being and getting in the way of progress.

Inviting a local network of artists and thinkers, this gathering contemplates and complicates the process of performance making. The symposium seeks to focus without centralizing or, more importantly, without further marginalizing, bodies and communities historically associated with abandoned or deemed-unlivable spaces. In actively inviting the public to tend to the impulse of traumatophilia, the gathering arouses potential and incites a curiosity for the role of rot when acknowledging these ruins that continue to hold us, our fairy tales and our myths, managing to make us distinct from the rubble itself, and considering the wreckage, the weathered, and the decayed as available remnants for a collision with the future, a biased archive of the past, and a sobering recognition for where we are now. 


CREDITS 

In Our Decline is co-presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center and CPR – Center for Performance Research, both in Brooklyn, NY. Presented in collaboration with Swissnex in Boston and New York with the support of Presence Switzerland, Pro Helvetia Global Travel Grant, Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, and Imbricated Real.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Jen Rosenblit makes performances based in Berlin after over a decade of working in NYC. Rosenblit invests in the problems that arise inside agendas of being together, often chipping away inside seemingly impossible spaces. Rosenblit hosts complex narratives of intimacy and autonomy, allowing for content to be emergent rather than determined as the body negotiates repetition, disruption, meaning and memory as we encounter others. Rosenblit’s performance work departs from preciousness and sentimentality in hopes of locating a more potent relevance for how we read and relate to constellations of things happening over time. Reaching for a heightened subtlety of experience by engaging sensation with visual information, the multiplicity of the body as an experiential culture unfolds. Rosenblit builds space for the viewer to experience indentation, for eyes that find molding and packaging, or the revealing and concealing of information to suggest utility as the poetic. The work exists out of bounds, off center, aligning itself to phenomenology rather than images. This research takes time, to perceive things, to relate and re-relate to all things as mattering. Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a 2023 La Becque (Vevey, CH) artist in residence, and currently teaches at Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin. Rosenblit has collaborated with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns, and Philipp Gehmacher in various capacities via performer, writer, creator, and director.

Simone Aughterlony is an independent artist based in Zurich and Berlin, working predominantly in dance, performance, and visual art contexts. They have been devising queer-spirited choreographic works over the last sixteen years. Engaging with alternative forms of kinship inside their process, new constellations emerge as possibilities for reconfiguring a culture of togetherness that fosters both familiar and unknown quantities. Their works playfully compose with representation and its saturation, seeping into and embracing the phenomenology of mis-recognition and the absurd. Aughterlony approaches art making as a practice where they navigate the contradiction between the domination of desire alongside the agency of all elements. They regularly teach at academic institutions such as ZHdK - Zurich University of the Arts, Manufacture in Lausanne, and DAS Art Amsterdam, amongst others, as well as devising and facilitating laboratory formats and frames for sharing and producing knowledge. In 2020 together with Marc Streit they founded Imbricated Real, an independent structure for contemporary art practice.https://www.aughterlony.com

Avgi Saketopoulou is a Cypriot and Greek psychoanalyst practicing in NYC. She serves on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and her publications have received numerous prizes. Her interview on psychoanalysis is in the permanent holdings of the Freud Museum (Vienna) and her monograph, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023) braids psychoanalysis with performance studies, philosophy, and queer of color critique to explore consent’s erotics, the vicissitudes of overwhelm, and the aesthetics of repetition. She is co-author, with Ann Pellegrini, of Gender Without Identity (UIT Press, 2023), and in critical conversation with Dominique Scarfone in The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (UIT Press, 2023). She is currently working on her next book project provisionally titled The Offer of Sadism. Her love of psychoanalysis and of queers is rivaled only by her love of motorcycles. www.avgisaketopoulou.com

A.K. Burns is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, working at the nexus of language and materiality. Burns utilizes sculpture, video, installation, writing, and performance—troubling systems that assign value with criticality and humor. A solo survey exhibition in 2023 at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio is currently on view at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA. Along with exhibiting internationally, Burns was awarded the 2023 Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin; a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship; a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Art; and a 2016 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University. A.K. Burns is currently an Associate Professor and MFA Co-Director at Hunter College, CUNY, Department of Art and Art History. akburns.net/about-contact/

Caroline Dionne is a scholar and educator with a background in art and architecture criticism and curation. She is Associate Professor of History and Theory of Design Practice and Curatorial Studies at Parsons School of Design at The New School. Her research sits at the intersection of literature, language theory, philosophy, and architecture, and investigates the role of language and the politics of place in design. Her recent book, Design Theory, Language and Architectural Space in Lewis Carroll (Routledge, 2023), proposes design theories of the emergent based on a close reading of the complete works of the nineteenth century writer and mathematician. Other publications can be found in Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon (Bloomsbury, 2020), Reading Architecture: Literary Imagination and Architectural Experience (Routledge, 2018), OASE 96 Social Poetics: The Architecture of Use and Appropriation (NAI, 2016), and Architecture's Appeal (Routledge, 2015). www.newschool.edu/parsons/faculty/Caroline-Dionne/ 

Jack Halberstam is the David Feinson Professor of The Humanities at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of seven books including: Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012) and a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press). Halberstam’s latest book titled Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (Duke UP, 2020). Places Journal awarded Halberstam its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality, and the built environment. Halberstam is now finishing a book titled Anarchitecture After Everything, which will be published by MIT Press in 2026. Halberstam was recently named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow. english.columbia.edu/content/jack-halberstam

Felipe Ribeiro (born 1977, Rio de Janeiro, BR) is a visual artist and independent curator, currently based in Switzerland. He’s a visiting researcher at HKB - Bern University of Arts, he has been a visiting scholar in the Transdisciplinarity Master’s program at ZHdK - Zurich University of the Arts since 2022, where he teaches performance art, decoloniality, and global south perspectives. Ribeiro is also an Associate Professor in the Graduate Programs of Dance Studies and Performing Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. His academic background includes a Master’s degree in Cinema Studies from NYU, and a PhD in Visual Arts from Rio de Janeiro State University, partially completed at NYU’s Performance Studies Department. His research, “Revolving Actions,” merges durational performance, image-making, and land art, stemming from his early work in experimental filmmaking. Ribeiro’s performances have been featured in major festivals across South America, as well as in Hamburg, Zurich, and Lisbon. From 2009 to 2013, he developed Trilogy of the Image, a series of staged works combining video, essayist texts, and performance. In 2018, he had his first solo exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, and in 2022, he presented [not] here, a duo exhibition at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in collaboration with Swiss artist Sarah Burger. His collaborative projects include artists such as Simone Aughterlony, Eleonora Fabião, Denise Stutz, and Vinicius Arneiro. Felipe Ribeiro is also a founding member and artistic director of Atos de Fala, an international festival dedicated to speech acts and performance, which has been held annually in Rio de Janeiro since 2011. In 2019, the festival collaborated with zurich moves! festival, supported by Pro Helvetia and Swissnex Brazil and co-curated and co-produced with Marc Streit, Head of Arts and Creative industries at Swissnex in Boston and New York. In addition to his curatorial and performance work, Ribeiro is the author of Ruminations: Performance Art in Between Pleasure and Resistance, published in Brazil in 2022 and soon to be re-released in Portugal.

Ryan McNamara is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in performance, video, photography, drawing, and sculpture. His work has been featured at MoMA PS1, The Guggenheim Museum (New York), Dallas Symphony Orchestra, ICA Boston, Perez Art Museum (Miami), ICA London, The Garage (Moscow), The Power Plant (Toronto), Athens Biennale, and The High Line (New York). He teaches performance in the Hunter College MFA program, and his work is included in the collections of Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum in New York.www.ryanmcnamara.com

General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets

*In the event that a performance is sold out, an in-person waitlist will open 30 minutes before showtime.


Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM


For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.

Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized. 

The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life. 

More information at forallyourlife.com. 

For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.


CREDITS

Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant

Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt


SUPPORT

The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.

Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.

Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.

Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.

Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.

Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]


ABOUT LIVE ARTERY | NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future. The annual Live Artery Festival provides a space for artists to network and share their work with the general public and presenters from around the world alike, which leads to commissions, tours and the building of long-term relationships.

General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets

*In the event that a performance is sold out, an in-person waitlist will open 30 minutes before showtime.


Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM


For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.

Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized. 

The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life. 

More information at forallyourlife.com. 

For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.


CREDITS

Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant

Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt


SUPPORT

The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.

Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.

Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.

Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.

Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.

Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]


ABOUT LIVE ARTERY | NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future. The annual Live Artery Festival provides a space for artists to network and share their work with the general public and presenters from around the world alike, which leads to commissions, tours and the building of long-term relationships.

General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets

*In the event that a performance is sold out, an in-person waitlist will open 30 minutes before showtime.


Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM


For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.

Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized. 

The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life. 

More information at forallyourlife.com. 

For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.


CREDITS

Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant

Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt


SUPPORT

The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.

Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.

Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.

Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.

Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.

Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]


ABOUT LIVE ARTERY | NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future. The annual Live Artery Festival provides a space for artists to network and share their work with the general public and presenters from around the world alike, which leads to commissions, tours and the building of long-term relationships.

Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

** Advance tickets for this program are sold out. An in-person wait list will open at 6:30PM.


MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP) is a performance-experiment by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Sarah Rothberg which uses improvisation, conversation, and AI language models to (literally) reflect the present moment.

MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP) is an extension of Rothberg’s larger body of work MEETINGS which centers conversation as a creative act and plays with the emerging communication technologies that affect it.

Creative Technologist: Tommy Martinez

Systems Engineer: Yotam Mann

Production Assistant: Han Zhang

Performers: Payton Adamski, Zephyr Koczara, Olive Lafuente, Georgie McKeon, Eliane Mitchell, Arden Thomas, and Bryce Walsh

Additional Support from: CPR – Center for Performance Research, Onassis ONX, the Jerome Hill Foundation

Special thanks to Johann Diedrick, Rosalie Yu, Peter Burr, Kelsa Trom, Bhavik Singh, Kate Brennan, Claire Hetschker,  Han Zhang, Roberto Kerry, and CPR (Nico Cabalquinto, Anna Muselmann, Alex Rosenberg).

Read full press release here (🚨contains spoilers!🚨)

View the Program


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sarah Rothberg creates playful, poetic, usually-a-bit-weird experiences that invite you to reconsider your relationships to the world around you. These take many forms ranging from installation to immersive experiences, performance, websites, video, writing, workshops, and experiments with technology. Rothberg’s work appears in a variety of contexts: at art exhibitions, in public google docs, on the screens in the NYC Subway system, or whispered into the void. Support for Rothberg’s work has come from organizations including: MoMA, CPR – Center for Performance Research, rhizome.org, bitforms gallery, MTA Arts&Design, CultureHub, and Gray Area. Rotherberg is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU (Interactive Telecommunications Program), a member of Onassis ONX Studio, and a mentor/former-member at NEW INC, and is part of collaboratives: MORE&MORE UNLIMITED, which offers experiences for imagining changed worlds, and IS THIS THING ON? a post-web2 experiment in artist-driven livestreaming. Rothberg is a 2023-2024 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.

Tommy Martinez is an artist and programmer working primarily through research, sound, and code. He creates software and musical systems for the internet, embedded devices, and for live multichannel performance. Martinez has performed at MoMA PS1, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Fridman Gallery, and Pioneer Works. He has lectured on sound and electronic art at School for Poetic Computation, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Yotam Mann is a musician and instrument maker. His career has been dedicated to discovering how new technologies can progress music. Since studying music and computer science at U.C. Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, Yotam has worked with grammy award-winning artists, authored foundational software libraries for music production, and created instruments and interactive music projects enjoyed by millions. Yotam was part of the inaugural class at NEW INC, adjunct professor at ITP NYU Tisch, and 2016 Creative Capital Grantee in Emerging Fields, and part of Betaworks’ 2020 AudioCamp. yotammann.info

Han Zhang is a visual designer, artist, and storyteller with a rich interdisciplinary background. Recently earned a master’s degree from NYU, she honed her expertise in creative technology and installation art. Han’s work spans cross-cultural collaborations with world-renowned museums and galleries, as well as freelance projects, including designing posters for films celebrated at international film festivals. She currently work as a sales and artist liaison intern at Gagosian.

Payton Adamski is a performer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is interested in music, comedy and theater, and is best known for getting two noise complaints during a karaoke rendition of Scream from the High School Musical 3 Soundtrack. 

Zephyr Koczara is a Brooklyn based performer best known for his role in "A Real Practical Joke" and "Fictional Story". He spends the majority of his free time playing Dungeons & Dragons and restoring vintage furniture. 

Olivia Lafuente is an occasional improver, new hobby every month enthusiast, often a producer or extra in friend’s random art projects, and community organizer. 

Georgie McKeon is a poet living in New York.

Eliane Mitchell (El-ee-awn-knee) is a writer, improv enthusiast, and "knowledge worker" in tech. She’s pumped to return to the stage—her last scripted role, nearly a decade ago, was a minor part in her high school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors.

Arden Thomas is a transmasc actor, comedian, and dancer who’s never met a bit he wouldn’t commit to—sometimes at great personal risk. When he’s not writing sketches or doing improv, you can catch him belting show tunes and perfecting his jazz hands.

Bryce Walsh is a comedian, researcher, and writer. You can find him wherever books are sold. 

Free with RSVP
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The digital gallery will remain on view through November 30, 2024.


As an extension of their work and research as a CPR 2023 Artist-in-Residence and their trilogy this is not a cult, x aka Saint Sir Coach presents an archive of mementos, materials, and media from their fictional cult Sky Dancers, Meta Angels, and Meme Fiends – internally known as THE FAMILY – in a digital gallery hosted on CPR’s website. Focused on the charming and relatable cult leader, Saint Sir Coach, this is not a cult I: THE COACH takes its digital audience on a journey of falling in love with Coach’s witty banter, pop culture references, energy readings, and motivational speeches. Coach is the hype person of your dreams and the primary cat parent of THE FAMILY’s golden child and mascot, the gray domestic shorthair called Avignon the Grey.

At the virtual opening on November 12, Coach will lead us on a tour of the gallery which will remain on view through November 30 with a sprawling archive of delicate cat whiskers, guided meditations, spiritually polytheistic words of affirmation, and more digital goodies that have led many professional and TikTok dancers alike to dedicate their lives to the Gospel of this satirical cult that’s not a cult.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

x aka Saint Sir Coach is a trans, conceptual artist and medium that uses sound healing as Social Practice. Dismantling and simultaneously utilizing our 11 years of education in theater, 25+ years in dance, and ambiguous training in visual art, a unique practice has been born. x has shared short films, installations, and dance works in Budapest, Detroit, Ithaca, and NYC. Selected accomplishments include: Creatives Rebuild New York Artist Employment Program, New Yorkers for Culture and Arts Advocate in Residence, CPR – Center for Performance Research Artist-in-Residence, AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellow, GALLIM Moving Artist Residency, Bronx Council on the Arts Bronx Cultural Visions Fund, and New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Festival 36 and LiftOff Residency. Our first solo show high functioning x.0. premiered in August 2022 in HERE Arts Center’s Sublet: CoOp Series.

Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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A new work by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Hans, Night Creatures is a love letter to all the men I have coiled my body around, to a love-hate relationship with New York, and to a constant wrestling match with a flamenco practice. A vespertine rumination of sexuality – from moonrise to sunrise – and the hunger, yearning, and fear that comes with being in love and lust of other male bodies. The work is also a technical exploration, having spent the residency year learning how to compose music using electronic, MIDI, and digital audio workspaces – composed while commuting through the vascular undergrounds of the NYC subway. The work is cradled by flamenco, using musical modes, movements, rhythms, melodies, and ideas, but deconstructs them to reflect a lived experience as a queer, fat-femme boy from the lush tropical fever-dream of Miami, living in NYC’s sticky, grimy, urban, angsty landscape. What does it feel like to dance House por Bulerias, move to the Fandangos of the L Train, and sing Tangos de Bushwick?

The performance will be followed by a conversation with Hans facilitated by leaders in the flamenco community on the nature of experimentation, orthodoxy, and framework of flamenco, and how it changes when it reflects non-Spanish folklore and experiences.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Hans is a dancer and tattoo artist from Miami, FL with a practice focused on dance as visual art. They have shared work with audiences in Florida and held artistic residencies in NYC. Hans has also participated in projects by Katy Pyle’s Ballez, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Peter Born. Hans describes himself and his work as the “gay lovechild of Frida Kahlo and Sailor Neptune’s lesbian love affair.”

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Jeonmonori is an extension of a musical practice that 2024 Artist-in-Residence Leo Chang has been immersed in for the past six years, drawing on Korean folk musical practices and instruments as the basis for building new electronic instruments. The jeonmonori is an electronic adaptation of the sangmo, a hat with a long, spinning whip made of ribbon attached to its crown, which is worn and played during the sangmonori, a Korean folk tradition where the instrumentalist/performer plays and dances simultaneously with their percussion instrument. During his CPR residency, Chang created the jeonmonori by modifying a sangmo hat, replacing the spinning ribbon with a lightweight, mini microphone. While wearing the hat, he moves in the middle of four hanging gongs that are amplified with transducers. The act of the mic moving within the amplified gongs creates feedback between the transducers and the mic-ed hat-whip, resonating the gongs, while Chang’s position and the speed at which the whip is spinning, among other factors, determines musical variables of feedback such as pitch, rhythm, and dynamics.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer, and performer of experimental music. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, until moving to the United States in 2011. His art is an act of homemaking inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo's projects have been presented and supported by the Vision Festival, Roulette Intermedium, Korea Foundation, Ostrava Days New Music Festival, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Brooklyn Arts Council, and EMPAC at Rensselaer, among others. He holds a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. www.listentoleo.com

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Tues, October 22 at 7 P.M.
Weds, October 23 at 7 P.M.


Endless Holes is a shared evening of new work in development by 2024 Artists-in-Residence Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo. Each work is a continuation of the artist’s research in multi-part or iterative performance projects: Rebecca Patek revisits Tough Titties, exploring depolarization, binary fatigue, and mystic shorelines; Alex Rodabaugh seeks to close their Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project with a deep dive into nostalgia, cyberspace avatar puppetry, paranoia, and denial; and Anh Vo builds on their ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.


PROGRAM

Rebecca Patek: Tough Titties 2: View from the Other End
An offering towards the effort around depolarization. We are for and against each other, for or against objects, ideas, realities. The binary fatigue of thinking and feeling can lead us to venture further than we might otherwise travel. We seek a mystic shoreline that is spoken of, that is rumored, but can we find it? What do we have to lose? What do we have to do to get there? Can I get there? Can you? Can we? I have many questions clearly but basically I am trying and that's the best I can do.

Alex Rodabaugh: n-1
Looking for a path forward to close the Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project and embrace the community that embraces me. The nth edition delves into the nostalgia that is colonizing our future, cyberspace avatar puppetry colliding with physical presence, and the paranoia or denial that arises from the perpetual threat of and participation in violence.

Anh Vo: pussy talks
pussy talks builds on Anh Vo's ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others. 


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. Her work is an amalgamation of comedy, theater, and dance. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts. Her work has been presented at MoMa PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place, among many others. As a performer, she was most recently thrilled to appear in work by Ryan Mcnamara, and can currently be caught honing her skills at open mics around NYC.

Alex Rodabaugh is a choreographer, dancer, and performer from Lima, OH (Shawnee territory), based in NYC (Lenapehoking). Alex's work has been shown at Movement Research at Judson Church, Draftworks at Danspace, Double Plus at Gibney, PRELUDE, American Realness, and Dance and Process at The Kitchen. Alex most recently performed in Rebecca Patek’s Tough Titties. Alex has performed in works by artists such as Moriah Evans, Simone Forti, Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Doug LeCours, Derek Smith, and Bailey Williams, among others, including two Bessie Award-winning performances. Alex is also a Treasurer/Co-Founder of Dance Artists’ National Collective and a current Artist-in-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research. www.alexrodabaugh.work.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in NYC, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental dance, queer and feminist performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).

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Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

Tues, October 22 at 7 P.M.
Weds, October 23 at 7 P.M.


Endless Holes is a shared evening of new work in development by 2024 Artists-in-Residence Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo. Each work is a continuation of the artist’s research in multi-part or iterative performance projects: Rebecca Patek revisits Tough Titties, exploring depolarization, binary fatigue, and mystic shorelines; Alex Rodabaugh seeks to close their Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project with a deep dive into nostalgia, cyberspace avatar puppetry, paranoia, and denial; and Anh Vo builds on their ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.


PROGRAM

Rebecca Patek: Tough Titties 2: View from the Other End
An offering towards the effort around depolarization. We are for and against each other, for or against objects, ideas, realities. The binary fatigue of thinking and feeling can lead us to venture further than we might otherwise travel. We seek a mystic shoreline that is spoken of, that is rumored, but can we find it? What do we have to lose? What do we have to do to get there? Can I get there? Can you? Can we? I have many questions clearly but basically I am trying and that's the best I can do.

Alex Rodabaugh: 🕳n-1🕳
Looking for a path forward to close the Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project and embrace the community that embraces me. The nth edition delves into the nostalgia that is colonizing our future, cyberspace avatar puppetry colliding with physical presence, and the paranoia or denial that arises from the perpetual threat of and participation in violence.

Anh Vo: pussy talks
pussy talks builds on Anh Vo's ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others. 


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. Her work is an amalgamation of comedy, theater, and dance. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts. Her work has been presented at MoMa PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place, among many others. As a performer, she was most recently thrilled to appear in work by Ryan Mcnamara, and can currently be caught honing her skills at open mics around NYC.

Alex Rodabaugh is a choreographer, dancer, and performer from Lima, OH (Shawnee territory), based in NYC (Lenapehoking). Alex's work has been shown at Movement Research at Judson Church, Draftworks at Danspace, Double Plus at Gibney, PRELUDE, American Realness, and Dance and Process at The Kitchen. Alex most recently performed in Rebecca Patek’s Tough Titties. Alex has performed in works by artists such as Moriah Evans, Simone Forti, Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Doug LeCours, Derek Smith, and Bailey Williams, among others, including two Bessie Award-winning performances. Alex is also a Treasurer/Co-Founder of Dance Artists’ National Collective and a current Artist-in-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research. www.alexrodabaugh.work.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in NYC, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental dance, queer and feminist performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).

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cocoon is a new work in development by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Ariana Speight which journeys through metamorphosis defined as a transformative transition, and is a continual introduction to the inner workings of self through the shifting of form. With a multidimensional and interactive framework incorporating storytelling, [love] notes, questions/queries, movement, and stagnation, cocoon uncovers what hinders and what supports during the process of emergence.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ariana Speight is a contemporary dance artist invested in researching the curiosities of life through various mediums. Originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Brooklyn, she has worked with a number of artists including Kayla Farrish, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kyle Marshall, Anna Sperber, and Jessie Young. Her freelance journey has led her to perform at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Chelsea Factory, Coffey Street, Dancewave, Lincoln Center Hearst Plaza, New York Live Arts, PAGEANT, Roulette Intermedium, The Shed, The Space at Irondale, The Tank, Webster Hall, among other venues in New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. She is a BFA graduate from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and is a certified Yoga and Pilates instructor where she continues to nurture her teaching practice.


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This program has been postponed until Fall 2024. Please stay tuned for CPR’s 2024 Fall Season announcement in September.


Saturday, June 22 from 5–8 P.M. | Opening and Offering
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
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Sunday, June 23 from 1–5 P.M. | Gallery Hours
Free and open to the public


2024 Artist-in-Residence Dorchel Haqq builds a domestic installation with live performance activations and audience invitations. In this offering, Haqq is exploring the home body.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, began to embody history at Dance Theater of Harlem. With experience from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Haqq initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. While studying at Purchase College, Haqq’s education expanded at Korea National School of the Arts. While exploring the world, Haqq found collaborations with Johannes Wieland, Stefanie Batten Bland, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, Sidra Bell, and Kayla Farrish. These relationships aided the  development of Haqq’s movement practices inducing an imaginative world with a focus on the care of the nervous. Haqq explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration and object investigation. Haqq is a Springboard-curated recipient of the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency and a City Artist Corps Grant recipient. Along with being an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, Haqq has performed with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai. Haqq is expanding her sensory research in 2024 as an artist in residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research and Baryshnikov Arts Center.

This program has been postponed until Fall 2024. Please stay tuned for CPR’s 2024 Fall Season announcement in September.


Saturday, June 22 from 5–8 P.M. | Opening and Offering
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

Sunday, June 23 from 1–5 P.M. | Gallery Hours
Free and open to the public


2024 Artist-in-Residence Dorchel Haqq builds a domestic installation with live performance activations and audience invitations. In this offering, Haqq is exploring the home body.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, began to embody history at Dance Theater of Harlem. With experience from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Haqq initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. While studying at Purchase College, Haqq’s education expanded at Korea National School of the Arts. While exploring the world, Haqq found collaborations with Johannes Wieland, Stefanie Batten Bland, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, Sidra Bell, and Kayla Farrish. These relationships aided the  development of Haqq’s movement practices inducing an imaginative world with a focus on the care of the nervous. Haqq explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration and object investigation. Haqq is a Springboard-curated recipient of the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency and a City Artist Corps Grant recipient. Along with being an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, Haqq has performed with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai. Haqq is expanding her sensory research in 2024 as an artist in residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research and Baryshnikov Arts Center.

Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

an improvisational duet on Blackness, abstraction, love, and grief.

Performed by 2024 AiR Malcolm-x Betts and Ella Dawn W-S.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Malcolm-x Betts is a New York-based visual and dance artist, and a CPR 2024 Artist-in-Residence, who believes that art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His artistic work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. He has a community engagement practice allowing artistic freedom and making art accessible to everyone.

Ella Dawn W-S is a dancer, choreographer, and gymnastics teacher living in Brooklyn. She presents work under the name Dancews. Her dances consider the relationship between internal and external body conditions, investigating the interplay of structure and aspiration. As a performer, she's had the honor of working with Josie Bettman, Lu Yim, Vita Taurke, Lavinia Eloise Bruce, SECT, inc., Erik Thurmond, Phoebe Berglund, and Kiera Bono. 


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You will be guided into a space of receptivity. We will be together but apart. The experience will be time and space specific yet also will shirk those boundaries. It may cause you to say something like "I saw a show, and it was a show that was for me." That is the goal and the aim.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and New York Live Arts / Fresh Tracks. Their work has been presented at MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place.


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Due to personal reasons, this program has been canceled.


From the source that brought you Heaven’s Gate, crystals, and Beyoncé, comes a new Oracle who will lead us into a blissed out future. In the Temple of Sir Coach, secular devotees learn about care work, harm reduction, mutual aid, and (Black) Anarchism as the way out and forward. Best known for hys collective energy readings and unsolicited advice, Sir Coach inspires, ignites, and encourages us all to be our best, truest, most authentic selves, and cultivates a safe container for cathartic transformations, spiritual awakenings, naps, and crafts! In this is not a cult, we gather for Lessons in Liberation to learn that once we are compassionate to ourselves we then have greater capacity to share that compassion to all living beings, with Metta loving-kindness, Gworlboss Energy, and intuitive empathy.


ACCESS NOTES

ASL and Audio Description will be provided.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Crip Punk and neuro-spicy, as a small fat, second generation Chinese-Jamaican, AuDHDer, Indigo Child, and trauma survivor, x aka Sir Coach has faer community and Hyp-ACCESS to thank for being alive today. When Coach isn’t sporadically falling to the ground or fainting after a bath, they are struggling with a million other comorbidities that they can’t afford to take care of fully. Hir extreme level of lifelong adversity that ze has been forced to “overcome” has challenged hymn to share knowledge and resources with as many people as he can; finding purpose when it feels like everything else is pointless. Coach is a Black Anarchist and Abolitionist who heavily supports mutual aid and grassroots activism of direct peer support. Coach is not a feminist and does not vote in political elections— feel free to ask themme why (not)! Coach creates a web across their art, identity, and lived experiences. We gravitate towards performance as it is natural and naturally occurring to be performative. We create multimedia installations for immersive experiences. Hope lies in the transcendent, visceral, and cathartic. Sir Coach’s known for faer very elegant, iconic, adorable, and cuddly emotional support animal that he is very allergic to named, Avignon :) (smile)

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“Mammy May I…?” is an ongoing contemplation of “Black Womanhood” as a reaction to the disillusionment of “Black Girlhood.” Exploring sensuality, play, rage, and release, this work by 2023 Artist-in-Residence Oskar Sinclair undertakes a simple query: to whom does your body belong, Black girl?

My body. A canvas of ebony hues. An emblem of Africanity and feminine strength. Carries me places where power, masculinity, and race entwine. My form–thickset with broad shoulders and big back, mammoth arms and stalwart thighs–is a tool → a crucible → forever dangerous when not useful. I know this. Now….

Before, without context of its lineage, my body was simply bad; the reason why, aged six, men began the cat-calling, and, aged nine, deemed me “too fast;” the reason popular girls kept me as bait for their wanton boy toys. I knew I was bait. I also knew I wasn’t very popular and, coming off the African Booty Scratcher train, I played their game, acted as pawn, found sense and made cents in my body’s usability. Promiscuous Jezebel, overlooked Mammy. Spectacle all the same. 

Do not pity me. I’m grown. Now.

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On November 18, Oskar Sinclair organizes a series of workshops – I’ll Be At Home….Maybe With You – exploring the work’s themes of sensuality, play, rage, and release, facilitated by Star Mitchell, Ash Rucker, and Osamudiamen Aiworo.

Oskar Sinclair (Vu/They) is a tough yet syrupy genderqueer femmebo(i)rg. Using Vu's body as a site of conversation, Oskar’s work explores, interrogates, and provokes notions of power, négritude, body politics, sex, queerness, desire, and outsidership. So here Vu is. Puckish. Malleable. Aspiring to wholesomeness. Amusing in all the ways you’re grateful for. Catch Vu running around NYC existing in multidimensional consciousness (because it be like that sometimes).

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Organized by 2023 Artist-in-Residence Oskar Sinclair in connection with their OPEN AiR program “Mammy May I…?”: A Paroxysm Back Home on December 10, this afternoon of workshops examines the body as a site of conversation. Three artists will lead participants through movement-based explorations of Sensuality (Star Mitchell), Rage + Release (Ash Rucker), and Play! (Osamudiamen Aiworo).

The body is a site of conversation. It embodies the outcomes of these dialogues. The body is also our first home. So when we move through the world experiencing these conversations without opportunities for respite and recovery, we become strangers in our homes (cue Tamia). We grow habituated to sidestepping it. We hate it. Apologize for it. Move impetuously. Things fall apart. Foreclose. Sometimes we lose our homes. And pry into the homes of others. Measuring our worth against theirs. Insisting on receiving our own apologies. A hurting world persists. What wonders could unfold if we changed our relationship with our bodies? We deserve spaces to find out. This is that. Invite every whisper, every tempest, every tale. Invite desire. Misfortune. Outrage. And heal. Release ____. Find ____. 

What happened to you? Come work it out. 


Workshop Schedule
Participate in as many workshops as you desire throughout the afternoon. Each workshop is approximately 1 hour. There will be small breaks between workshops to recover and check in new participants.

12:00 PM | Making Love With YOU with Star Mitchell
Brought to life with inspiration from Minnie Ripperton’s Adventures In Paradise, this workshop aims to introduce a sweet approach to the practice of sensual movement. Guided through an intimate movement meditation, participants are invited to refocus the relationship they currently have with their bodies using queries as lanterns to guide this exploration. Attendees will also have the opportunity to enhance their experiences of sensuality and self adoration by curating a three-song soundtrack that resonates with their inner desires as they create a moving love letter to their bodies. The workshop will culminate in the initiation of a practical moving routine to help navigate an intentional way of loving their bodies. Throughout the workshop, individuals are encouraged to engage the following questions: What excites your body? What makes you feel most confident? If your body had a rhythm what would it sound like? How would you move to it? How do you honor your body?

1:15 PM | You’ll Appear When The Flames Go Out with Ash Rucker 
There’s an undeniably visceral power in shaking out the pains we trap in our bodies. To shake off those burdens is to grant ourselves the liberty to rediscover the emancipation of our very souls. Join Ash Rucker, movement educator, and founder of TherapART, for a workshop to come back home. To ourselves and bodies. In this immersive experience, we will begin to explore the hidden corners of our inner worlds, creating space for growth and expansion in the outer. Together, we will move through the emotion of rage, tracing the depths of our beings to find where this feeling resides, ultimately paving way for freedom and soulful liberation. This workshop invites you, through a synergy of movement, meditation, and art therapy, to embark on a deep excavation, unearthing and shedding layers that hinder your path to healing and self-discovery.

2:30 PM | The Party is the Court and I Bring the Ball! with Osamudiamen Aiworo
“The party is the court and I bring the ball!” Wherever music plays, a party emerges. And when there’s a party, there’s a dancer being invited to come alive. The goal of this workshop is to impart the significance of embracing enjoyment while dancing with the self and with others. 


About the Artists

Oskar Sinclair (Vu/They) is a tough yet syrupy genderqueer femmebo(i)rg. Using Vu's body as a site of conversation, Oskar’s work explores, interrogates, and provokes notions of power, négritude, body politics, sex, queerness, desire, and outsidership. So here Vu is. Puckish. Malleable. Aspiring to wholesomeness. Amusing in all the ways you’re grateful for. Catch Vu running around NYC existing in multidimensional consciousness (because it be like that sometimes).

Star Mitchell (They/Them/he/she) is a Celestial luminescence of love. A Brooklyn-based artist creating with all mediums that excite them, they aim to awaken and “Move with love as the intention and Rebirth as the Score.” Star uses movement and multimedia as a further expression of our inner being. Giving voice back to the inner child that lives within. While walking in light of their Highest self. Star has taught movement as a form of interpersonal communication and reworking narratives for Arts and Literacy programs throughout Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. They have Choreographed & Performed in collaboration with EMERGENYC's Residency Program with Brooklyn Arts Exchange 2023, CPR – Center for Performance Research as a 2022 Artist-in-Residence, The Shed’s Open Call as a guest choreographer for Ana María Agüero Jahannes Field Day in 2021, and is a summer 2021 City Artist Corps Grant recipient. A former fellow of Nana Chinara’s Healing The Black Body Fellowship 2019-220, and Caitlin Mahon’s Mayhem Dance Company while pursuing their BFA in Dance at SUNY The College at Brockport, 2018. 

Ashley (Ash) Rucker (She/Her) founded TherapART to promote the positive effects of art therapy after struggling with the anguish of a sibling suffering from drug addiction and incarceration. A gifted dancer and passionate creative, she formed her unique method using meditation, dynamic movement,, and creative play as an alternative to traditional therapy. The results and breakthroughs were incomparable. Doubling down on how effective it was on adults, she’s been paying it forward from the beginning. Focusing on youths significantly effected by the criminal justice system, helping them to work through the release of emotional barriers that limit their future lives. A trained yoga teacher and graduate of the Institute of Transformative Mentoring (ITM) at The New School, she has facilitated TherapART workshops and ceremonies both nationally and internationally. Ashley has called New York home since 2011.

Osamudiamen Aiworo (He/Him) normally goes by Osa or Mudia, and is a student pursuing Finance with a goal of creating my his Research Firm. His current hobbies include Fashion Design, Programming (Game Development & Web Development), and Groove. He doesn’t normally classify himself as a Dancer, but as a Groovist, due to the fact that he just likes to have a good time when he goes to an event where music is present. However, for the past 3 years since Aiworo discovered Amapiano, he has been developing his skills in this dance style, without a teacher. Being that there are no South Africans teaching Amapiano in NY, he has still been able to learn on his own. With Groove and Dance, Aiworo’s goal is to learn as much as possible and one day go to Johannesburg, SA to further his knowledge on the culture and dance style of Amapiano.

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the zebra goes wild where the sidewalk ends is a happening named after the Henry Dumas poem, and gleans inspiration from Dumas’ body of work in relation to the ongoing dispossession of black, brown, and queer bodies. Through an accumulation of archive, dance, video, sound, and sculpture, 2023 Artist-in-Residence Raymond Pinto transgresses the spectacle of artistic production, revealing fissures between analog and digital, leisure and loiter, knowledge and discovery, ethos and emergence. Staged as a series of encounters using various media, Pinto uses this opportunity to explore a new body of work which reclaims abjection as refusal. 


Raymond Pinto (he/they) was born in Bridgeport, CT. He studied dance and graduated from The Juilliard School in 2013. He was awarded a Princess Grace Foundation Award in 2012 for his achievement as a dancer and was a Young Arts Award winner in Modern Dance in 2009. He has worked with internationally touring dance companies, notable choreographers, and artists. As an artist and educator himself, Raymond has presented his own works at festivals, theaters, galleries, workshops, and conferences both locally and globally. He has presented his work at the Judson Memorial Church, MoMA PS1, Cue Art Foundation, Architekturzentrum Wien, Elastic Arts, and the Venice Biennale di Danza. He was an Artist in Residence at Movement Research and Art Omi. In addition to creating new performance art works, Raymond also holds a Master’s Degree with a focus in Performance Studies from New York University. Despite the precious conditions of today’s world, Raymond intends to continue to create new works that situate the African and Latinx diasporas as contextual points of departure. While emphasizing the possibility of non-linearity as a method of aestheticizing realities, Raymond’s multidisciplinary practice makes way for the immaterial and residual to become resonate.

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2023 Artist-in-Residence Benae Beamon shares an in-progress presentation of Re(verb), a new tap dance work that puts the ring shout – a black Southern cultural tradition tied to spiritual contexts – and Motown movements in conversation. The work considers how elements of black cultural archive and black religious discourse function within ritual and black spiritual expression. Set to music that ranges from gospel to seventies funk, Re(verb) uses the interplay of these two movement styles to subvert the way that we discuss black spirituality as separate from secular black culture. With that in mind, this piece uses tap dance legacies – namely that of Cholly Atkins, a tap dancer and choreographer for Motown – to explore black culture and movement as extensions of the divine and of community.

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After the performance, fellow 2023 Artist-in-Residence and tap artist Orlando Hernández will engage Beamon and the audience in a conversation about the work.

Before the performance, Orlando Hernández will be teaching a workshop from 2:30–4pm – In the Break: Tap Dance and Embodied Rhythm – which is free with RSVP. No tap dance experience required.

Benae Beamon also curates an OPEN STUDIOS on Sunday, November 5 at 6PM with new work-in-progress by Jordan Deal, Michael J. Love, Kaleena Miller, and Adriana Ogle.


Benae Beamon (she/they) was raised in North Carolina, and her work is informed by black Southern culture. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University, an M.A. in Religion from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from Boston University. As a performance artist, Beamon uses movement, rhythm, space, and language as tools to sculpt sound and highlight the rich place where race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect with culture and ritual. Both her artistic work and scholarship examine the extraordinary and spectacular in the everyday, focusing on the way that the mundane can be sacred ritual. She has performed at Joe’s Pub in New York City, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston with Subject:Matter, a Boston-based tap dance company. Independently, she was a 2019 finalist for the Hudgen's Prize and has premiered work at VCU Institute for Contemporary Art and at Arts on Site in New York City.

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Sunday Salon supports work by CPR resident artists at various stages of development, and may take many forms, including presentations of live work, installations, artist talks, and exhibitions of research, materials, and ephemera. This program will feature new work in development by three of CPR’s 2023 Artists-in-Residence: Orlando Hernández uses technologies of tap dance, improvisation, and mask work to explore/explode myth, identity, and narrative; Eleanor Kipping integrates the notion of “virus as other” at the intersections of public health, politics, and stigma through an exploration of Western media, political speech, public persuasion, and propaganda in [transmission]; and Alex Romania wonders at the idea of 'the sick american psyche' in a fantastic and absurd enactment of the self with Face Eaters, the final work in their multidisciplinary triptych Whoops!.

Orlando Hernández
Orlando Hernández will share a window into a process they've been developing using technologies of tap dance, improvisation, and mask work to explore/explode myth, identity, and narrative. Hernández is a tap dancer and choreographer based in New Jersey. He has presented his work at On the Boards, La Casa Ruth, SPACE Gallery, the Provincetown Dance Festival, Dance Now at Joe's Pub, and Movement Research at the Judson Church. He is a member of the companies Subject:Matter and Music from the Sole. Orlando is the recipient of fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Brown Arts Initiative, and Yaddo, and is a 2022-2023 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts and a 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research.

Eleanor Kipping: [transmission]
Eleanor Kipping’s multi-disciplinary practice is in the exploration of the experience of the Black body in the United States through the examination and deconstruction of historical and contemporary narratives. She is interested in the public, private, and civic negotiations of race, gender, and the practice and effect of violence and surveillance on the body and mind. [transmission] is a series of solo performances that integrate the notion of “virus as other” at the intersections of public health, politics, and stigma through an exploration of Western media, political speech, public persuasion, and propaganda. Employing the vintage television console as a point of orientation, the work appropriates text from political speech and public service announcement archives ranging from the first fireside chats to health notifications sent en masse via text. 

Alex Romania: Face Eaters
Face Eaters is the final work in Whoops! the trilogy of interdisciplinary live works by Alex Romania. Following KLUTZ (2018, Abrons Arts Center), and junkhead (2019, BKSD), Face Eaters will premiere as an evening-length work at The Chocolate Factory in May 2024. The works utilize iconographic intersections of horror, SciFi, home movies, broadcast media to twist the elbow of the religion of aesthetics, recalibrating the dangers of good / bad. In healing and hurt, wandering the mirror where personal sickness and societal sickness meet, the works traverse the psychedelic everyday of autobiography, where grief, love, loss, and resilience shine. Face Eaters wonders at the idea of 'the sick american psyche' in a fantastic and absurd enactment of the self.

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Performance: 6:30 P.M.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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Gallery hours: 5:00–6:30 P.M.
free and open to the public

*In the event that advance tickets for the performance are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 6:00 P.M.


STRATA is a multi-sensory performance, a collective lucid dream, an urgent embodied call to slow down and experience our (be)longing. In this elemental and surrealist myth of recreation, the artists quite literally attempt to reassemble a massive earth body. Inside the matrix of self-abandonment, violence, and ecological catastrophe, can this communal excavation reveal an alternate path towards somatic and interdependent possibility?

This in-progress presentation - visioned, choreographed, and directed by CPR 2023 Artist-in-Residence LILLETH - is part of Sunday Salon (in this case, happening on a Saturday), a program which supports work at various stages of development by CPR resident artists. To accompany the performance, there will be an exhibition on view in CPR’s Storefront Gallery of research, ephemera, objects, and scores on the intersecting scientific methodologies, creation myths, rituals, and somatic practices that inform this work.

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LILLETH Vision, Creator, Direction, Choreography, Lights/Puppet/Installation Design, Music Composition, Creative Production 
Rad Pereira Co-Facilitation, Embodied Liberatory Dramaturgy, Community Engagement
Jen Anaya Healing Dramaturgy, Composition, Co-Facilitation, Collaborating Performer
Jack (Gypjaq Kai) Fuller Co-Facilitation, Choreography, Divination Dramaturgy, Alter Builder, Collaborating Performer
Tianna (Restlust) Nicole Music Composition, Sound, Performance, Puppet Build Team, Creative Production
Kelley Shih Lights, Creative Production
Sohina Sidhu Co-Creative Producer, Co-Facilitation, Dramaturgy, Collaborating Performer
Xiaoyue Zhang Dramaturgy, Choreography, Co-Facilitation, Collaborating Performer
Lester St. Louis Music Composition, Sound Design, Collaborating Performer
Arewa Basit Collaborating Performer
Lluca Huatuco Collaborating Performer, Choreographic Co-Facilitation
Ann-Sylvia Clarke Collaborating Performer
Kari Ostensen Collaborating Performer
Ayelet Haschahar Jewish Spiritual & Herbal Consultant
Sarah Finn Co-Creative Producer
Nicole Amaral Production Stage Manager
Jackie Rivera Puppet Construction & Engineering, Puppet Deck Hand
69999 by Parisjoy Costume Designer & Stylist
edxi betts Somatic Dramaturgy, Zine Maker
Grant Jones Creative Scientist
Dria Brown Community Care Orbit & Consulting artDoula 
S T A R R (busby) Creative & Spiritual Advisor
Niki Franco Somatic Installation Writer
Julia Kaganskiy Curatorial Advisor
Maria Camia Puppet Co-Direction & Design Consultation
Jon Riddleberger Puppet Co-Direction & Design Consultation
Elizabeth Stewart Associate Lighting Designer
dioganhdih hall soundscape storyteller & composer
Yin Cheng-Kokott Creative and Archival Advisor
Buffy Production and Access Assistant
Morgan Johnson Associate Producer and Production Assistant
Garrett Allen Creative Production Assistant
Flor Tejada Director of Photography
Lizardo Reyes Jr. Steadicam Operator
Andrea Resendiz Gomez Creative Production Assistant
Alexis Copithorne Creative and Graphics Advisor
Diana Michener Visionary Advisor, Grandmother and Mentor to Lilleth
Natalie Geary Medical Advisor, Mother and Mentor to Lilleth
Isabelle Glimcher Legal Advisor, Sister and Mentor to Lilleth

Workshop Collaborators Ashton Muniz, Ita Segev, Rayne Raney, Jax Jackson

Note: This project is an emergent organism cultivated through care, shared leadership, and accountability. Roles have been co-determined and will be updated as they continue to shift and emerge. Additional collaborators will be added as we continue to grow our team. 

CPR is ADA compliant and wheelchair-accessible, with accessible and all gender single-occupancy restrooms. An integral part of the process is making this multisensory project as accessible as possible. Detailed notes on accessibility pertaining to the program will be announced in the coming months.  If you have any questions, please contact CPR at info@cprnyc.org or write to Studio Lilleth directly at studio.lilleth@gmail.com.

Detailed notes on accessibility and what to expect:

What to Expect: At 5:00pm, doors open to the storefront gallery, where there will be visual art, video, herbal waters, research, and a cozy corner. At 6:15pm, doors to the performance space will open for the 6:30 in-progress performance sharing. The performance will be about 75 minutes, without intermission nor late entry. However, you can leave at any time if necessary.

What to Wear: We invite you to wear monochrome, so your top and bottoms are matching in color. 

Covid Policies: Please do not attend if you are experiencing any cold, flu, or COVID-related symptoms. Masks will be required at all times for participants inside CPR unless you are drinking water. After the performance we will offer refreshments in the exhibition, at which point you can remove your mask. There will be a separate exit through which you can leave if you do not want to move through an unmasked room.

Divination: The performance invites ritual practice co-facilitated by different collaborators of this project. We will have very intentional openings and closings. If you would like more information about the traditions we are calling upon and our spiritual praxis, please reach out to strataemerging@gmail.com. 

Sound/ASL Interpretation: The music will call upon solfeggio healing frequencies, harmonic minor scales, rhythmic beats, and droning sound scapes. We will not be offering ASL interpretation for this performance. We are in the process of building a long term collaboration to incorporate American Sign Language deep into the fabric of the project. This iteration foregrounds sound as a tool of healing. We will offer a virtual version this summer that will have interpretation and captions. Thank you for your patience as we build our processes slowly and intentionally with collaborators. If you have any questions, feel free to write to strataemerging@gmail.com  

Light: The performance will involve bright light, saturated colorful light, low-light, slow pulsating light, and darkness, including some sudden darkness.

Scent: There will be essential oils and herbs bottled at the care station for your personal use as needed. 

Care Station: We will have a facilitator on site who can support you in positive resourcing in the event that this performance activates any difficult and urgent emotions or sensations. During the event the welcome space will function as a calming retreat in the event you need to leave the performance space.

Documentation: We will be documenting the performance with video and photography.

RSVP ($10 suggested donation)

If you wish to forego the donation please contact nick@issueprojectroom.org to RSVP.


Doors 7:30 P.M.
Performance 8:00 P.M.

Co-presented with ISSUE Project Room, Jean Carla Rodea presents an evening of new work as part of her/their 2023 ISSUE residency. Rodea is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, multi-channel sound installation, voice, poetry, and video. Her/their work utilizes electronics, real-time voice processing, and improvisation to deal with problematic socio-political and cultural constructs that are rendered visible through multimedia installation and performance.

View archival video documentation of the performance on ISSUE Project Room’s website.


Note from Jean Carla Rodea on the work:

Invisibility, opacity, and disappearance are ways of not being seen or recognized. I am interested in the potential of what happens vocally, sonically, and visually when one is present yet unseen. I often consider these concepts as I explore filming and recording fog and smoke-like states as an analogy. Fog can be seen as a metaphor for invisibility. It can be associated with absence and secrecy, as it can obscure things from view. In the same way, opacity can be related to being hidden or concealed –– something that is not quickly revealed or understood. During my year-long residency, All Your Sojourns Have Led to This takes different forms and incorporates diverse media (works for voice and electronics, sound installation, and video/projection mapping) while exploring invisibility as a portal for strategies of resistance.

My work is informed by shifting and adaptable identities, immigration, ritual, performance, ecology, construction work, improvisation, and interaction with and through time-based media in diverse spaces. I’m interested in creating art that questions critical sociopolitical issues such as the politics of the body, gender, and the asymmetry of human relations. I’m invested in understanding how time is insistently constructed through memory and how these memories, whether embodied or recorded in spaces, are documented and re/constructed through the body’s physical and vocal potential.

Whether it takes place in my (personal) archive or an institution, archival research often leads me to draw from fiction and speculative history around documents, physical traces, and spaces. A particular area of interest is how these robust processes can interrupt and make space for fictional dimensions that can disrupt and subvert the norm. By interacting with the archive, performative roles are present. Often I am a witness, a mere observer, an ethnographer, or a researcher registering and transmitting as much as possible from an event in a temporary space.


Jean Carla Rodea (b in Mexico City) is a research-based interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her/their work involves a variety of disciplines and mediums such as music, sound, poetry, vocal performance and performance art, photography, video, movement, and sculpture. Her/their artistic practice deals with spaces and instances where problematic socio-political and cultural constructs are rendered visible through multimedia installations and performances. As a musician and improviser, Jean Carla is dedicated to performing and composing various music/sound in diverse settings–from solo to large ensembles. She/they have performed and recorded with William Parker, Darius Jones’ vocal quartet Elizabeth-Caroline Unit, Gerald Cleaver’s Uncle June, Anthony Braxton’s Syntactical Ghost Trance Music Choir, and Cecilia Lopez’s Machinic Fantasies. In addition, she/they lead her/their multi-media projects; Buscando a Marina/Looking for Marina, and Nine Easy Steps Toward Oblivion. Jean Carla has worked with Asiya Wadud, Jo Wood-Brown, Patricia Nicholson, Art Jones, Miriam Parker, rebeca medina, Merche Blasco, Amirtha Kidambi, Rachel Bersen, etc. They/she has performed extensively and shown work at Roulette Intermedium, Carnegie Hall, BRIC, Knockdown Center, Judson Church, Danspace, Center for Performance Research, Panoply Lab, The Clemente, FiveMyles, mh PROJECT nyc, to mention a few.

Free with RSVP
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*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.


Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play

"Years ago, when you were little, minutes ago, it feels like, we sat at a table and (almost) talked about what was done to our bodies. Beneath us, the earth cracked open. Not hell. Just the massive, uncaring mouth of the world and all its gears making us think that what happened to our bodies was inevitable. I was always worried the thing that made us family was this kind of hurt. I always worried the thing we were passing each other in the blood was the horror that follows. I was worried you'd be born a ghost." 

This play is a spell against the impulse to narrate sexual assault as a horrifying heirloom, a blood curse some families are bound to. This play is a spell in the service of pulling the earth apart to get ourselves unstuck. 

Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, writer-performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Jesús is a 2021 CantoMundo fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, a 2021 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2019 Walter E. Dakin Playwriting Fellow of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a recipient of the 2019 Letras Latinas Scholarship from the Community of Writers’ Poetry Workshop, and a 2019 poetry fellow at Idyllwild Arts Writers Week. Jesús is also a 2018 Undocupoets Fellow, a 2018 Tin House Scholar, a fellow of The 2018 Poetry Incubator, and the runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their work has been published in Shade Literary, The Texas Review, The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, The Mississippi Review, Palette, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, The McNeese Review, and PANK. Their poetry has also been featured on NPR’s Code Switch, The Slowdown, The BreakBeat Poets' LatiNext Anthology, the Best New Poets 2020 anthology, and the anthology, Somewhere We Are Human. As an actor, they are the recipient of four B. Iden Payne Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama (2018), and Outstanding Original Script (2018) and they were nominated for the Mark David Cohen New Play Award for their play, (Un)Documents. Their playwriting work has received awards and support from OUTSider festival, Teatro Vivo, The VORTEX, The Kennedy Center, New York Theatre Workshop, The Latino Theatre Co. at the LATC, and The Flea. Jesús is currently an MFA playwriting student at Brown University.


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Mon, March 27 at 7:30 P.M.
Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

Tues, March 28 at 7:30 P.M.
Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

Weds, March 29 at 7:30 P.M.
Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

Mon, April 3 at 7:30 P.M.
Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Tues, April 4 at 7:30 P.M.
Maya Lawson: For Du

Free with RSVP
RSVP

*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.

Maya Lawson: For Du

For Du is a play for two in three parts, staged site specifically at the revelry of a wedding after-party during which two people remeet to discover their shared past unlocks unexpected games of catharsis and fantasy...In a world of music, animal masks, secrets and loss, how much choice do we have in loving or letting go?

Maya Lawson is a playwright and performer whose plays include Come Home to Me; Lotusland; Iphigenia: A Play for Adults; and When We Were Small No One Noticed. She has performed across the country, and in new work in NYC with The Mad Ones (The Essential Straight and Narrow, New Ohio Theatre); William Burke (Untitled American Flag Craft Project, The Brick); Johnny Klein (Auto Graphic Novel, Theater for the New City); Christiana Axelson (Tundra, Invisible Dog Art Center, BAX, Dixon Place), and Lily Gold (Lily Gold Project, Art@Renaissance). Films include: Brand Upon the Brain!, directed by Guy Maddin and ZBird, co-written with director Wyatt Troll. She has a BFA in Acting from Cornish College of the Arts, and is a recent graduate of the Hunter College MFA in Playwriting program with the class of 2022.


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Mon, March 27 at 7:30 P.M.
Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

Tues, March 28 at 7:30 P.M.
Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

Weds, March 29 at 7:30 P.M.
Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

Mon, April 3 at 7:30 P.M.
Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Weds, April 5 at 7:30 P.M.
Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play

Free with RSVP
RSVP

*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.


Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Gooey Pudín is a Nuyorican mermaid from the Gowanus Canal who’s dreams of stardom are compromised when billionaire Beff Jezos buys the canal with plans to develop it into a resort, casino and amusement park and offers her a job as a showgirl. But also, she’s hellbent on avenging her mother’s death by capturing and punishing the mafia boss who murdered her. And maybe the mafia boss and Beff Jezos are in cahoots? And also it’s a musical…or a cabaret! Or a guided tour of the polluted waters of the canal? OR an amusement ride attraction at Wasteland™ called Gooey Pudín’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure and Gooey’s forced to wear an electric collar and the folks at Amazon Zanamon give her a little zap when she goes off script because they have a story to maintain.

Daniella De Jesús is a Puerto Rican & Dominican actor/writer/siren from (pre-gentrified) Bushwick, Brooklyn. A member of the Public Theater’s 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group, her plays include Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back (FKA Columbus Play) (2022 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2020 winner of the Burman New Play Award), Mambo Sauce (The New Group Off Stage, semi-finalist for Clubbed Thumb’s 2018 commission), Pa’ Ti Tengo De Todo (The Public Theater’s Spotlight Series), Untitled Puppet Show (or On The Other Side of Anchovy Avenue) (commissioned by the Public Theater for Play At Home) and The Thief Cometh (United SoloFestival). As an actor, she is best known for her role as Zirconia on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, for which she received a nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series by the Screen Actors Guild Awards. De Jesús is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama and is a current fellow at Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Mon, March 27 at 7:30 P.M.
Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

Tues, March 28 at 7:30 P.M.
Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

Weds, March 29 at 7:30 P.M.
Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

Tues, April 4 at 7:30 P.M.
Maya Lawson: For Du

Weds, April 5 at 7:30 P.M.
Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play

Free with RSVP
RSVP

*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.


Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

New Delhi, India, 1975. The Emergency. ‘Aaj ki Baat’ with Rahoul Raja (RR), government approved and sanctioned, plays on the radio. The only source of news for the nation. But who is Rahoul Raja? Is Rahoul Raja Rahoul Raja? And what does the nation need to know about Rahoul Raja?

Divya Mangwani is a writer and theatre artist from Pune, India, now based in New York. She creates reimaginings that question our perception of narrative truths and shared mythologies.As the granddaughter of Sindhi refugees, she has grown up listening to stories of the Partition and her work focuses on global identity and belonging. Divya was the founder and Artistic Director of Moonbeam Factory Theatre, where she wrote, directed, and produced plays that were staged in India, Singapore and Glasgow. MFT used theatre as a tool for education for underprivileged and neurodivergent students. In New York, she has developed work with UNICEF, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, Gingold Theatrical Group, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Mabou Mines, Hypokrit Theatre, The Flea, Project Y, Astoria Performing Arts Centre, Pipeline Theatre, Theatre East, Rising Sun, LMCC and Governors Island. Selected work: Elements of Change (United Nations Climate Change Week and touring NYC schools), Yes, Uncle (finalist, Leah Ryan Prize), and One, Two, Three (winner of best script, director, play and audience vote, Short+Sweet Festival). Divya is a member of The Civilians’ R&D Group and The New Georges Jam and was a fellow of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab, Gingold Speakers Corner playwright, NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, Hypokrit Theatre Tamasha playwright, Project Y Writers Group playwright and Playlab fellow at Pipeline Theatre. Divya has also worked as a journalist and editor for publications like The Times of India, ESPN, Crisis Response Journal, Daily News & Analysis and Janus Education. www.divyamangwani.com


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Mon, March 27 at 7:30 P.M.
Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

Tues, March 28 at 7:30 P.M.
Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

Mon, April 3 at 7:30 P.M.
Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Tues, April 4 at 7:30 P.M.
Maya Lawson: For Du

Weds, April 5 at 7:30 P.M.
Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play

Free with RSVP
RSVP

*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.


Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free is a story of Lion, a Puerto Rican handball player from Bushwick, molded by Black and Puerto Rican revolutionaries, who turns to hip hop, salsa and bomba dance to defend her turf from the gentrification that is tearing her community apart.

Alba Delia Hernández is an award winning writer, inspired by Puerto Rico, growing up in Bushwick, and salsa, who dances in the hybrid forms of fiction, playwriting and poetry. She was awarded the winner of the 2022 One Festival for her one woman show, Juana Peña Revisited. She is a recipient of the Bronx Council of the Arts First Chapter Award and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University. She has been published widely including in A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine and in Harvard’s Latinx Publication: PALABRITAS. She has performed at El Museo del Barrio, The Whitney Museum, Nuyorican Poets Café, Teatro Circulo, En Garde Arts, and La Respuesta in Puerto Rico.  She’s a passionate yoga teacher, salsa dancer, and videographer who recites speeches by Puerto Rican revolutionaries or moves to songs of resistance. She teaches creative writing to NYC public school students with Teachers & Writers Collaborative.


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Mon, March 27 at 7:30 P.M.
Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

Weds, March 29 at 7:30 P.M.
Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

Mon, April 3 at 7:30 P.M.
Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Tues, April 4 at 7:30 P.M.
Maya Lawson: For Du

Weds, April 5 at 7:30 P.M.
Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play

Free with RSVP
RSVP

*In the event that advance tickets are sold out, an in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Co-Presented with The Bushwick Starr


Since 2010, The Bushwick Starr’s annual Starr Reading Series has cultivated a diverse group of writers at all stages of their careers, who approach writing for the theater in thrilling and unexpected ways. Selected through an invited submission process by a rotating committee of curators, currently Jehan O. Young, Elizagrace Madrone, and William Burke, 4-8 playwrights are selected each year, and receive developmental support for a public staged reading of a new, usually unfinished, work. With The Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home currently under renovation, the 2023 Starr Reading Series will take place at, and is co-presented by, CPR – Center for Performance Research. Now in its second year, this collaboration unites the process-oriented missions of both organizations, and celebrates the incubation of new, experimental work in performance. The Starr Reading Series has previously supported new plays by writers including Whitney White, Clare Barron, Phillip Howze, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Haruna Lee, and many more.


Marissa Joyce Stamps: Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis

In Letiche and The [Wondrous] Pursuit of Elvis, New York City mother-daughter duo, Imara and Kal, are on a swamp tour on their New Orleans vacation. They find themselves led by a white captain on an all-Black boat of tourists. In the murkiness of their 75-minute tour, Kal finds herself itching and her psyche morphing in a place full of contradictions and turns to the alligators and their leader—the mighty alligator, Elvis—for some clarity.

Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Haitian-American NYC-based writer, director, and actor who creates vortexes that center, celebrate and amplify Black folks through an Afrosurrealist lens. Recent plays include You Can Tell from the Twisted Juniper (2022 Eugene O'Neill NPC Finalist; Chautauqua Theatre Company‘s 2021 New Play Workshop; The Workshop Theater's Fall 2020 Writers Intensive), Blue Fire Burns the Hottest (Exponential Festival 2022; The Orchard Project’s 2021 Performance Lab), deadbodydeadbodydeadbody (Ars Nova ANT Fest 2022), Being Up in Here and All the Other Businesses that Don't Concern You (The Brick Aux 2022), and Techno Paper Planes (Moxie Arts Moxie Commission 20/21). She is also a frequent collaborator of The 24 Hour Plays. Marissa has also collaborated with The National Black Theatre, The Public, The Fire This Time Festival, Conch Shell Productions, Dixon Place, Irondale, New Ohio Theatre, Keen Company, The Wild Project, Playwrights Downtown, BUFU, and more. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. Marissa serves as The Workshop Theater's Literary Manager. She also teaches English and is currently studying MFA Playwriting at Brooklyn College with Haruna Lee and Dennis A. Allen II, where she was a Rona Jaffe Foundation 2021-2022 Fellow. She is also an NYU alum in BFA Drama and BA Journalism. marissajoycestamps.com


Additional Starr Reading Series programs:

Tues, March 28 at 7:30 P.M.
Alba Delia Hernández: I've Been Giving Puerto Rican History Lessons for Free

Weds, March 29 at 7:30 P.M.
Divya Mangwani: The Nation Needs to Know

Mon, April 3 at 7:30 P.M.
Daniella De Jesús: GOOEY’S TOXIC AQUATIC ADVENTURE at Wasteland!™ (presented by amazon)

Tues, April 4 at 7:30 P.M.
Maya Lawson: For Du

Weds, April 5 at 7:30 P.M.
Jesús I. Valles: untitled table play