HERE's 25th Anniversary Season Continues With ASSEMBLED IDENTITY

As a centerpiece of its 25th anniversary season, HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director, and Kim Whitener, Executive Director) is proud to present the world premiere of Assembled Identity, a new theatrical work by Kristin Marting created in collaboration with Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard. Running April 24 - May 19, Assembled Identity is set to open on May 1 and features performances by Newhard and Lipica Shah, who play multiple characters and speak several languages. Assembled Identity is the 29th hybrid work by Marting, who co-founded HERE in 1993. Her multi-disciplinary work has been noted for its "striking unity of sound and meaning" (New York Times) and for being a "a true treat for the adventurous." (Time Out New York).

When twin sisters discover they are actually clones, a blood-tingling reality comes sharply into focus. An imagined scenario so plausible it's disturbing,Assembled Identity taps into our collective unease with a tech-dominant world. Using original and found text, live cinematography, and contemporary music, this electrifying duet delves into racial ambiguity, the science of identity formation and questions who has the authority to define it.

In addition to creating original theatrical works, Marting, in her stewardship of HERE, has not only built a robust, creative home for multi-disciplinary work in New York, but also, has been instrumental in the transformation of downtown New York. In 25 years, Marting, in partnership with HERE's Executive Director Kim Whitener, has grown HERE's budget from $350,000 to nearly $3M in this anniversary season. All along, Marting has continued her creative directing work, with local premieres at BAM, Ohio Theatre, and Soho Rep in addition to touring her work both nationally and internationally. Few leaders have sustained such a rich and influential career while working in contemporary theater in New York.

"I've always found the dual work of creating hybrid theater and running a company both invigorating and fulfilling," said HERE's Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting. "It's a happy coincidence that my newest work, Assembled Identity, examines individual identity. Much as the characters that Mariana and Lipica portray embark on perilous journeys of self-discovery, my career, especially as a woman, has been filled with moments where I've had to create my own path. In doing so, I've been fortunate to create an institution that has championed the work of hundreds of artists who, in turn, have continuously inspired my own creative practice."

Deep collaborations have always been at the center of Marting's work. Often, designers are brought into the creative process from the very beginning. Assembled Identity grew out of conversations that Marting had with co-creators Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard about ethnicity and authenticity in our contemporary world. As performers of color, Bedi and Newhard constantly navigate ethnic and cultural identity as part of their daily lives.

"As an Indian immigrant, a woman of color, a motherto a bi-racial child and an actress, I've been steeped in multi-pronged questions about identity my entire life," says Bedi. "With Assembled Identity, I wanted to tell a story with these other marvelous women about, essentially, who and what determines our identity. I'm excited that we've set these questions in a chilling world of science and laboratories in the near future."

"As a bi-racial woman who spent her formative years in Asia, I've lived with the label 'racially ambiguous' as a constant redefinition of my identity," says Newhard. "This has shaped my worldview. CreatingAssembled Identity with Purva and Kristin was an opportunity to examine the phenomena of the societal impulse to control individual identity."

The creative team forAssembled Identity includes David Bengali (video), Drew Weinstein (sound), Christina Tang (lighting), Normandy Sherwood (costumes), and Kendall Allen (production stage manager).

Twenty performances ofAssembled Identity will take place April 24-May 19 (see above schedule) at HERE, located at 145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street. Critics are welcome as of April 26 for an official opening on Tuesday, May 1 at 7pm. Tickets, priced at $25 general / $45 premium, can be purchased by visiting here.org or by calling 212-352-3101. In person sales at the box office after 5pm only on performance days and two hours prior to curtain for matinees. For Group Sales, contact tickets@here.org.

Kristin Marting (Director/Co-Creator) is a director of hybrid work based in New York City. She has constructed 29 stage works, including nine original hybrid works, six opera-theatre and music-theatre works, nine reimaginings of novels and short stories and five classic plays. She works in a collaborative, process-driven way to fuse different disciplines into a cohesive whole. She has developed a unique directorial form that features a "gestural vocabulary" used both as an emotional signifier and as a choreographic element.

Marting has directed 19 works at HERE and also premiered works at BAM, 3LD, Ohio Theatre, and Soho Rep. Her work has toured to 7 Stages, Berkshire Festival, Brown, MCA, New World, Painted Bride, Perishable, UMass, Moscow Art Theatre, Londonand Oslo. She has directed readings, workshops and premieres for Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, National Sawdust, Playwrights Horizons, Prototype, Public Theatre, Target Margin, and others. Selected residencies include Cal Arts, LMCC, Mabou Mines, MASS MOCA, NACL, Orchard Project, Playwrights Center, Smack Mellon, Voice & Vision and Williams. She served as Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She assisted Robert Wilson on Salome and Hamletmachine and co-founded the tiny mythic theatre company. She graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with honors in 1988.

Marting is the Founding Artistic Director of HERE Art Center, where she directs projects, cultivates artists and programs two performance spaces for an annual audience of 30,000. She also co-founded and is Co-Artistic Director of the annual Prototype opera-theatre festival.

Purva Bedi (Co-Creator/Recorded Scientist) is an actress and deviser of new work. Theater: Dance Nation (Playwrights Horizons), An Ordinary Muslim (New York Theatre Workshop), IDIOT (HERE directed by Kristin Marting), Veil'd (Womens Project), East is East (Manhattan Theatre Club / New Group), My Wandering Boy (South Coast Rep), The Rise of Dorothy Hale (St Lukes). With Target Margin Theatre where she is an Associate Artist: Reread Another, The Tempest, Second Language, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, Old Comedy, These Very Serious Jokes, The 5 Hysterical Girls Theorem, The Seagull, Sonoma. Select Film & TV: Sully, Equity, Madam Secretary, Person of Interest, Nurse Jackie, The Good Wife, Unforgettable, Kumare & American Desi. Purva is a member of The Actor's Center Workshop Company and Founding member of Disha Theatre. She studied at Williams College, The British American Drama Academy and The Public Theatre Shakespeare Lab.

Mariana Newhard (Performer/Co-Creator) is an actress working in theater and film specializing in hybrid and devised new work. Theater includes: La Negra (Hi Arts), The Lie Jar (Leviathan Lab), Lilia (Rising Circle Rep), La Paloma Prisoner (Signature), The Emperor and the Queen's Parisian Weekend (Prototype at HERE), Elegy for a Midshipman (Dixon Place), By Rights We Should be Giants (Secret Theater) and Three Graces (The Ohio). With HERE (Directed by Kristin Marting): Trade Practices, Lush Valley, Possessed, Women of Orleans, The Courtesan. Films include Thoughtscribe , The Snake and the Parrot, Something Else (Best Actress Paris Film Festival) and The Wanderlust Room (Cannes SFC). She developed her plays Da Food is Da Food and The Women's Project with Packawallop Productions. She is a member of DTF WAW, The Dorian Collective and was the artistic director of NascentWorks. She studied at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts, Sarah Lawrence and The British American Drama Academy.

Lipica Shah (Performer) is a New York City-based actor-singer who thrives on collaborative work on stage and screen with a passion for developing new plays and musicals. Select New York: Cost of Living (MTC), Bunty Berman Presents... (The New Group), Coping (NY Fringe Festival & Encores), Rachel: The Musical (The Wild Project - Fruitie Award "Outstanding Featured Performance"), Lonely Leela (HERE). Select Regional: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Orange, Passing Strange, and simultaneously originating the title roles in The Chronicles of Kalki and Shiv as part of "The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy" (all at Mixed Blood Theatre Company), The Lake Effect (Geva Theatre), The Who and The What (Gulfshore Playhouse). Select Film: A Silent Voice (English Dub), Admission , Let's Be Out The Sun is Shining (NYIFF Best Actress Nomination). Select TV: Time After Time, Limitless, The Following, Pokémon. Catch her on the Nickelodeon cartoon Regal Academy and upcoming short film Brunch Wars. www.LipicaShah.com

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Founding Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Executive Director), which celebrates its 25th Anniversary this season, was named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art.

Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, James Scruggs Disposable Men, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike.

Assembled Identity received developmental support from Drop Forge and Tool, Dorset Theatre Festival Women Artists Writing Group, NACL Deep Space Performance Resident Program, and as part of the 2017 Artist Residency Program of The Drama League of New York (Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, Executive Artistic Director; Travis LeMont Ballenger, Associate Producer; Sherri Eden Barber, Program Director). The Drama League Artist Residency Program is funded in part by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the Howard Gilman Foundation. The project also received support from the Axe-Houghton Foundation, Disha Theatre, Mental Insight Foundation, and Puffin Foundation.