HERE Appoints Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, And Lauren Miller As Co-Directors

The Board of Directors of HERE has appointed Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller as co-directors of the Obie award-winning institution. The Co-Directors will collaboratively take on the artistic and executive leadership of the organization, overseeing the various functions of the organization and bringing each of their individual passions, skills, and artistry to nurture the vision of HERE as a whole.

In many ways, HERE's new leadership model echoes the founding of the organization over 30 years ago. In 1993, four artists, Barbara Busackino, Tim Maner, Kristin Marting, and Randy Rollison, co-founded HERE as a vibrant and welcoming community that delights in supporting and launching a variety of artists with unique perspectives. HERE started with the simple idea that boundary pushing hybrid artists can best realize their visions if they are invited into a creative home that offers flexible resources to match their unlimited imaginations. That vision and artist-centered mission has continued under Marting who is stepping down this month from her role as Founding Artistic Director to make room for this new generation of leadership.

Co-Directors Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller remarked, “30 years ago, visionary artists Barbara, Tim, Kristin, and Randy established a dynamic shared leadership team at HERE. The four of us are honored to pick up this legacy and launch into a reimagined future for HERE in partnership with a values-driven board full of integrity and heart. As thought leaders in the American performing arts field, we recognize this pivotal moment as an unparalleled opportunity for transformation. We are dedicated to innovative paradigms that reinvigorate arts spaces as necessary to a thriving democracy. As cultural ecologists, we will tend to HERE's creative ecosystem, sustain space for boundless imagination, and extend a broad invitation for all to engage meaningfully in dialogue about our field and our world.”

HERE's Board Chair Jennifer Suh Whitfield remarked, “The dynamic appointment of Jesse, Annalisa, Lanxing, and Lauren as Co-Directors is the result of a deliberate succession process propelled by HERE's progressive values. In consultation with Creative Evolutions, this invaluable, year-long undertaking was carried out by HERE's community of incoming and outgoing leadership, board, staff, artists and partners. Members of the Board and I are thrilled to have found four individuals with diverse perspectives and experiences who will propel HERE into its next 30 years and beyond.”

Details on HERE's 2024-2025 season will be announced soon.

Please visit www.HERE.org for more information.

About the Co-Directors

Jesse Cameron Alick

is a dramaturg, producer, poet, playwright, essayist, artistic researcher and science fiction expert. Jesse has been working in the theater world for over 20 years, starting out as Artistic Director and Producer at independent theater Subjective Theater Company, then The Public Theater as Company Dramaturg, and most recently the Associate Artistic Director at The Vineyard. Jesse is an active freelance dramaturg in NYC, nationwide and internationally. He studied writing with Adrienne Kennedy and has taught theater courses, lectured at classes and mentored students at a myriad of programs, currently at NYU.

Annalisa Dias

is a Goan-American transdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and award-winning theater-maker working at the intersection of racial justice and care for the earth. She is a co-founder of Groundwater Arts and recently was director of artistic partnerships and innovation at Baltimore Center Stage (BCS). Prior to joining BCS, Annalisa was acting creative producer and a producing playwright with The Welders, a DC playwrights collective; and a co-founder of the DC Coalition for Theatre & Social Justice. Annalisa's work has been produced or developed by arts institutions across the US and UK, and her artistic work has taken her to South Africa, India, Malawi, Arctic Norway, and more. Annalisa frequently teaches theatre of the oppressed and decolonization workshops and is a sought-after speaker about race, identity, and performance.

Lanxing Fu

is a Chinese-American, multidisciplinary theater artist rooted in social practice. She is a writer, producer, performer, and educator, and Co-Director of Superhero Clubhouse, an interdisciplinary collective creating theater for climate justice. Her artistic work has been seen throughout NYC in hotel rooms, parks, townhouses, and spaces such as The Public Theater, LaMaMa ETC, Brick Theater, LaGuardia PAC, and Baryshnikov Arts Center, and developed with institutions nationally and internationally. Previously, she was Producing Associate with Siti Company, guest lecturer at Skidmore College and is currently a guest director at Pace University. She has been a speaker and facilitator with Theatre Communications Group, The New School, Virginia Tech, Columbia University, and more. Her writings on theater, climate arts, and intersectional justice have been published across a variety of platforms. 

Lauren Miller

is a theater director, producer, arts advocate, community organizer, and fundraiser. She brings to HERE over a decade of experience in cultural advancement for The Bushwick Starr, the Irish Repertory Theatre, and TACT/The Actors Company Theatre and her passion for contemporary performance-based work. From 2011-2015, Lauren developed 20 original plays as producer of the newTACTics New Play Festival. She co-created “Out of an Abundance of Caution”, a socially distant performance experiment which streamed live on Twitch every Sunday from March 2020-March 2021. Lauren serves on the Board of Directors of The Brick Theater, as a co-organizer of the Cultural Solidarity Fund, and fundraiser and organizer for progressive political causes. She is dedicated to realizing the just creative ecosystem and economy that cultural workers and communities deserve.

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