Wednesday, October 4 – Friday, October 6, 2017
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY is pleased to present the fourteenth annual PRELUDE Festival. Dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre and performance, PRELUDE 2017 features an array of artists working in theatrical and interdisciplinary performance. The festival gives audiences and artists a survey of the current New York moment.
Inspired by the DIY maker movement, curator Andrew Kircher has assembled a program of exciting new works-in-process, conversations, new scholarship, and skills-building workshops. By merging the critical with the creative, PRELUDE will provide a space for artists to share, engage, and discover emerging practices in form, craft, and technology.
The festival, which is free and open to the public, is held in various locations throughout The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, New York, NY 10016), including The Martin E. Segal Theatre, The Elebash Recital Hall, and The James Gallery.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @preludeNYC and join the conversation using #prelude17!
We livestream many of our events. Check out theSegalCenter.org/Home.
Curators: Andrew Kircher in collaboration with Frank Hentschker
Producer: Madeline Barasch
Associate Producers: Sean Leo & José Rivera, Jr.
Administrative Producer, the Segal Center: Yu Chien Liu
Assistant to the Administrative Producer: September McCarthy
Design Coordinator: Mike LoCicero
Website Design: Alex Weiss-Hills
Photographer: Maria Baranova
Videographers: Shaowen Liang & Jacqueline Spavent
Front of House Managers: Manon Samoyeau & Salma S. Zohdi
Company Managers: Stacy Collado & Tessa Lee
Technical Directors: Brad Burgess & Mike LoCicero
Sound Technician: Alexander Ronneburg
Stage Managers: Stanley Mathabane & Emilia Wojciechowski
Madeline Barasch (Producer) is a director and producer hailing from San Francisco, California. She has worked on shows with The Public Theater, Creative Time, 600
HIGHWAYMEN, Catch! Performance Series and Smith Street Stage. Madeline received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.
Brad Burgess (Technical Director) is the Artistic Director of The Living Theatre, after having worked with friend and mentor Judith Malina for 10 years until her passing in April 2015.
He is an OBIE award-winning member of The Living Theatre ensemble. Brad is a founding board member of The Indie Theater Fund, an organization of 230-plus theatre companies
that collectively tithes and fundraises to support independent theatre. He is a founding board member of Sophie Gerson’s Healthy Youth with former councilman Alan Gerson and
many other NYC community leaders, an organization that provides arts, sports, and science programs to underprivileged kids in the city. He is a board member of The Assembly and
FRIGID NY. He is an associate at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a workshop leader for the All Stars Project Cops & Kids program
with the NYPD.
Stacy Collado (Company Manager) is a performer and dance-maker based in NYC. Her choreography has been shown in NYC and Philadelphia. Stacy has travelled to Turkey to perform the site-specific immersive dance-theatre production Donmus Ruya, choreographed by Julia Ritter and directed by Ayrin Ersoz. She has performed with Lucy Kerr Movement Art and Meghan Frederick/Practice Project among others
Frank Hentschker (Executive Director, the Segal Center) who holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the now legendary Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany, came
to the Graduate Center in 2001 as program director for The Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and was appointed to the central doctoral faculty in theatre in
2009. Among the vital events and series he founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series, the annual fall PRELUDE Festival, and the PEN World Voices
Playwrights Series. Before coming to The Graduate Center, Hentschker founded and directed DISCURS, the largest European student theater festival existing today; he acted
as Hamlet in Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine, directed by the playwright, performed in the Robert Wilson play The Forest (music by David Byrne) and worked as an assistant
for Robert Wilson for many years. Frank currently teaches Theatre History at Columbia University.
Alex Weiss Hills (Web Designer) is a designer and musician based in Bloomington, IN. He has been working with the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as Associate Director of Digital Initiatives since June of 2014. He is also the Web Developer for The Media School at Indiana University. For a portfolio of Alex’s work, please visit his website: alex.weisshills.com
Andrew Kircher (Curator) is the Director of the Devised Theater Initiative and Associate Dramaturg at the Public Theater. As a creative producer, he has worked with companies
including Ars Nova and Les Freres Corbusier, and was previously the associate director of the Under the Radar Festival. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, and is
currently writing a dissertation entitled Dramaturgies of Intellectual Property Law in Read-Write Theatre.
Tessa Lee (Company Manager) is a director, producer, and casting personality. She has recently worked with 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Daniel Fish, The Mad Ones, and as the casting
intern at New York Theatre Workshop. BFA: NYU Tisch PHTS
Sean Leo (Associate Producer) is a Brooklyn based director, media designer and producer of performance. Currently the project coordinator for the Freehand Hotel Art Commission,
he also works with the Obie-winning Catch performance series. He managed Audience Services at Performance Space 122, and is a graduate of Bard College’s Theater and Performance Program.
Yu Chien Liu (Administrative Producer, the Segal Center) is a Taiwanese professional in the field of arts and nonprofit administration. She is working at the Segal Center where she produces events and festivals as well as manages the visiting scholar program and its Publication Wing. She’s also a freelance producer for theatre and publications. MPA in Arts Management, BA in Political Science.
Michael LoCicero (Technical Director/Design Coordinator) received his undergraduate education at Wake Forest University, where he studied music, with a focus in musicology. In 2012 he interned as an administrative and production assistant at the David Rubenstein Atrium at The Lincoln Center and in 2013 worked for his alma mater as a technical assistant for two Wake Forest performance spaces before returning to New York. Michael was the 2014/15 MESTC Next Generation Fellow and continues to work with the Center as a Segal Center Associate.
September McCarthy (Assistant to Administrative Producer) is senior at Muhlenberg College, where she is double majoring in Theatre and Philosophy. She has a strong interest in contemporary dance and experimental theatre, which she spent last year studying at the Accademia Dell’Arte in Arezzo, Italy and the Španski Borci in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Stanley Mathabane (Stage Manager) is a solo musician (artist name: SunSon), music producer, sound designer and actor based in Portland, Oregon. He firmly believes that art is the mirror with which we can honestly see ourselves and seek understand the complexity of existing in this wonderfully transient world.
José Rivera Jr. (Associate Producer) (@joseishere) is a queer latinx recording, and visual artist. José is currently his first visual EP entitled ‘LQQK, The Way I Look,’ is currently on staff at Movement Research as Media & Communications Associate, and works as rehearsal assistant to Meredith Monk/The House Foundation. joseishere.com
Alexander Ronneburg (Sound Technician) is a recent graduate from Stanford University, where he studied Music, Science, and Technology. He worked as sound technician for the improv troupe Baby Wants Candy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He also served as music director and recording engineer for his a cappella group, The Stanford Mendicants.
Manon Samoyeau (Front of House Manager) is a third-year student in Social and Political Sciences (Sciences Po) in Aix-en-Provence, France. Manon started her artistic work as a choreographer for the Bureau des Sports student dancing company AS Danse during the year 2016-2017, and was also in charge the cultural journal Le Nouvel Aixhaustif (creation, realization, selling), both at Sciences Po Aix. Manon is originally from Paris where she acted for many years and developed a special interest for dance, theatre and the performing arts. Manon is currently the Operations Management Intern at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center CUNY of the City University of New York.
Emilia Wojciechowski (Stage Manager) is a theatre technician based in NYC. She recently graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with a BAH in Drama. She can be often found working at The Public Theater, most recently as the stage management intern on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Delacorte Theater.
Salma S. Zohdi (Front of House Manager) is the Next Generation Fellow at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center CUNY of the City University of New York, and a Dramaturg. She received two international fellowship awards from the American Association for University Women. Salma holds MA and MFA degrees from the American University in Cairo, and Columbia University. Highlights of her work: The Next War, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, UNDROWN’D, Nathan the Wise, and An Evening of Arab Classic Plays.