Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Sets Its 20th Annual PRELUDE Festival, October 7-22

From October 7 to 22, 2023 the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of CUNY Graduate Center will present its 20th annual PRELUDE Festival, titled "Re: Generation."  

The event brings together artists, thinkers, activists, and presenters from New York City and beyond in free performances and panels to explore the many ways in which new forms of theater and performance are taking place today. The festival will offer over 60 free presentations in 17 venues in and around New York City.

This festival is the annual flagship event of the Segal Center. Traditionally, it is dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary NYC theater, dance, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance and offers an array of short performances, readings, and screenings -- a survey of the current New York moment and the work being prepared for the next season and beyond, plus new commissions and panel discussions with artists, scholars, and performers.

Included among the 60+ participating artists this year are Elevator Repair Service, Nature Theater of Oklahoma/Talk, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Kate Valk & Liz LeCompte/Talk/Wooster Group, Jess Barbagallo & Tina Satter, Aaron Landsman and Carl Hancock Rux/Mabou Mines.  For the full list, see below.

Among the festival's 17 venues this year are Segal Theatre Center, The Tank, The Brick, PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, Park Avenue Armory, Newtown Creek Nature Walk, Jersey City Theatre Center, and The Watermill Center. For the full list, see below.

Panels, talks and selected performances will be live-streamed on: www.HowlRound.com.

After the time of COVID, the New York theater and performance landscape woke up to a new reality where nearly every aspect of theater and performance has changed. Theaters are experiencing a collapse of the subscription system, a loss of audiences, and the closure of spaces and festivals. But is it really the doom and gloom we talk and read about? Theater artists, ensembles and institutions from New York’s vibrant performing arts scene are coming up with radical ideas, new spaces, and inspiring projects. PRELUDE ’23 asks artists and audiences: Do we need a renaissance to get back to where we were before — or do we need a revolution? The festival will feature a wide array of new work created by artists at the forefront of contemporary theater and performance, as well as a series of artist talks and panels that put artistic practice in conversation with critical discourse while debating tradition, change, and the ethics and politics of making work in response and relation to racial capitalism, climate collapse, and a new environment for the arts in the 21st Century.