RHEOLOGY, EAT THE DOCUMENT, and More Set for HERE 2024-2025 Season

For over 30 years, the OBIE award-winning HERE has been a leader in the field of commissioning, producing, and presenting new, hybrid performances viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines. HERE's 2024-2025 season is the final season to be programmed under Emeritus Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting and the first to be guided by the organization's newly appointed Co-Directors, Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller. The season exemplifies HERE's mission of creating a home for artists who blend multiple genres—theatre, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual art and installation, spoken word and performance art—and defy categorizations.

HERE's 2024-2025 season opens with the world premiere of A Meal, a multi-sensorial live performance by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya. Part-ritual, part-celebration, part-installation, and part-dinner, A Meal explores our deep connection with food—where it comes from, what we eat, and who we share it with. A Meal (September 10–29, 2024) is the first of three premieres this season that have been developed through HARP, HERE's nationally recognized artist residency program.

As part of Prototype, HERE will premiere Eat the Document, a new opera by composer John Glover, librettist Kelley Rourke, director Kristin Marting, and music director Mila Henry. Based on the novel by Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document (January 9–17, 2025) unfolds in the wake of a radical protest gone wrong. Shifting between the 1970s and the 1990s, the work considers idealism, activism and consequences, while exploring connections between the two eras – their language, technology,

Also in Spring 2025, HERE will present [Untitled Miniature], the newest work created and performed by Joshua William Gelb and his company Theater in Quarantine. [Untitled Miniature] is being developed as a durational, solo-performance intended for both an in-person audience at HERE's DOT theater in New York City, and a live-streamed audience on HERE's digital platform URHERE. Theater in Quarantine imposes its strictest limitations to date in this hybrid, digital confrontation performed entirely from a box measuring only 34” wide by 19” tall. [Untitled Miniature] is the third premiere this season to have been developed through HARP, HERE's nationally recognized artist residency program.

In a co-production with The Bushwick Starr and Ma-Yi Theater Company, HERE will present RHEOLOGY, the newest work by Obie Award-winning writer/director Shayok Misha Chowdhury, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for his celebrated play, Public Obscenities. RHEOLOGY, is a performance memoir created and performed with his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty. In this production, an artist son studies his physicist mother while she studies the strange behavior of sand. Together, they try to understand the science and perform the story of how things flow. RHEOLOGY (April 22-May 17, 2025 at The Bushwick Starr) is the second premiere this season to have been developed through HARP, HERE's nationally recognized artist residency program.

HERE's 2024-2025 season will also include Puppet Parlor (December 17-18, 2024), Dream Music Puppetry's annual celebration of new puppetry shorts, curated and hosted by Basil Twist; the twelfth annual Prototype (January 9-19, 2025), a opera and music-theatre festival which is co-curated and co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects; and the fourth annual edition of Puppetopia (April 30-May 11, 2025), a festival of new puppetry that presents fresh, live and fully realized works.

HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street. Memberships and single tickets are now on sale and can be purchased by calling 212-647-0202 or by visiting www.here.org. 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. Memberships start as low as $100 for four flexible tickets and complimentary wine, with additional benefits offered at other levels. Single tickets can be purchased for as low as $15 for all preview performances. Students and seniors can access free tickets on a rush basis, subject to availability for each performance, and must be redeemed at the box office.

Additional details on HERE's 2024-2025 season follows.

HERE's 2024-2025 SEASON

WORLD PREMIERES

A Meal

Created by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya
Commissioned by HERE and co-produced with LEIMAY

September 11–29, 2024

Created by critically acclaimed multidisciplinary artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, A Meal is multi-sensorial live performance that is part-ritual, part-celebration, part-installation, and part-dinner. Commissioned by HERE and co-produced with LEIMAY, A Meal explores our deep connection with food—where it comes from, what we eat, and who we share it with.

This two and a half hour immersive experience takes audiences through a series of vignettes across HERE's two-story building, where they'll eat together, witness performances by mythological creatures, and encounter offering songs and evocative sound/video movement installations. The layered work features handmade organic tableware, crafted artifacts, and suggestive images and dances, all resonating with our post-industrial relationship with food and the Japanese and Colombian roots of the co-creators.

Eat the Document

Composed by John Glover, Libretto by Kelley Rourke, Directed by Kristin Marting, Music Directed by Mila Henry

January 9–17, 2025 as part of Prototype

Based on the novel by Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document unfolds in the wake of a radical protest gone wrong. Shifting between the 1970s and the 1990s, this new opera by composer John Glover, librettist Kelley Rourke, director Kristin Marting, and music director Mila Henry considers idealism, activism and consequences, while exploring connections between the two eras – their language, technology, music, and activism.

[Untitled Miniature]

Created by Joshua William Gelb / Theater in Quarantine
Spring 2025

Theater in Quarantine imposes its strictest limitations to date in this hybrid, digital confrontation performed entirely from a box measuring only 34” wide by 19” tall. Pushing the boundaries of, and proximity to, a concept of self-exposure that's becoming the default extension of our ever more codependent relationship with technology and life online, [Untitled Miniature] asks how we find ourselves embedded within all this technology. How is our body exploited when the content we share is ourselves? [Untitled Miniature] is being developed as a durational, solo-performance for a Spring 2025 premiere intended for both an in-person audience at HERE's DOT theater in New York City, and a live-streamed audience on HERE's digital platform URHERE.

The Bushwick Starr presents
a co-production with HERE and Ma-Yi

RHEOLOGY

Written and Directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury

in collaboration with Bulbul Chakraborty

April 22-May 17, 2025 at The Bushwick Starr (419 Eldert Street, Brooklyn)

Obie Award-winning writer/director Shayok Misha Chowdhury's recent play, Public Obscenities, is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and was singled out as one of the best theater works of 2023 by The New Yorker. His newest work, RHEOLOGY, is a performance memoir created and performed with his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty. Chakraborty's specialty is the titular science of rheology, the laws governing the malleability and movement of matter under force. Another of her loves is the poetic songs of Bengali composer Rabindranath Tagore. These songs paint glorious pictures about the drama of nature: monsoons produce drum-like thunder claps, rivers let loose their long hair into waterfalls, music flows through generations. Chakraborty learned these songs from her foremothers, then passed them on to Misha. In this production, an artist son studies his physicist mother while she studies the strange behavior of sand. Together, they try to understand the science and perform the story of how things flow.

FESTIVALS

HERE's Dream Music Puppetry presents

Puppet Parlor

December 17-18, 2024

Dream Music's annual celebration of new puppetry shorts returns! This two-night-only event is curated and hosted by Basil Twist.

HERE and BMP present

Prototype 

January 9–19, 2025 

PROTOTYPE: OPERA l THEATRE l NOW is a co-production of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, two trailblazers in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works. The pioneering festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and is a model now emulated around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking. In addition to the world premiere of Eat the Document, Prototype will include New York premieres of Black Lodge by composer David T. Little and poet Anne Waldman (which was developed in its earliest stages at HERE), In A Grove by composer Christopher Cerrone and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, Positive Vibration Nation by Sol Ruiz; we well as a new edition of ART BATH in partnership with producers Mara Driscoll and Liz Yilmaz.

HERE's Dream Music Puppetry presents

Puppetopia

April 30-May 11, 2025

HERE's festival of new puppetry returns for its fourth annual edition. Curated by HERE co-founder Barbara Busackino and Dream Music Artistic Director and master puppeteer Basil Twist, the festival presents new, live and fully realized iterations of works and in-progress excerpts.

URHERE

Ongoing, with premieres and archival releases throughout the season

In addition to the above in-person performances, HERE also offers accessible programming on its new virtual platform, URHERE. A one-of-a-kind, rigorously curated virtual platform for outdoor, digital premieres, and archival works which soft-launched in November 2022, URHERE builds on HERE's extensive outdoor and digital work during the pandemic. URHERE aims to occupy an important part of the art ecosystem which nurtures experimentation, sparks dialogue, and creates engagement with the local community. It also provides an opportunity for global audiences and artists to take part in HERE's programming. Supporting independent artists and ensembles, URHERE expands on HERE's mission to support multidisciplinary work made by artists at every stage of their careers. While projects may take many different forms, the platform focuses on artists whose work captures a rich cross-section of risk-taking, new perspectives, and artistic disciplines.

About HERE

The award-winning HERE was named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theater by Time Out New York and is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performances viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines—theatre, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. HERE is a producer, presenter and venue for local and global ground-breaking artists.

HERE's standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Taylor Mac's The Hang and The Lily's Revenge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, and Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique, as well as works directed by Emeritus Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting including James Scruggs' Disposable Men and Kamala Sankaram and Rob Handel's Looking at You.

In addition to its extensive producing work with local artists through its HERE Artist Residency Program, HERE presents work from New York, across the country, and around the globe through its Dream Music Puppetry Program, and its widely acclaimed PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre, co-curated and co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects.

As a welcoming venue, HERE proudly curates adventurous artists, companies and productions, whether emerging or recognized, through its SubletSeries.

Since its founding in 1993, HERE and the artists it has supported have received 18 Obies, 2 Bessies, 5 Drama Desk Nominations, 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 4 Doris Duke Awards, 7 Tony Nominations, and 2 MacArthur Fellowships.

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