THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL PRELUDE FESTIVAL
Thursday, October 4 – Saturday, October 6, 2018
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY is pleased to present the fifteenth annual PRELUDE Festival. Dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre and performance, PRELUDE 2018 features an array of artists working in theatrical and interdisciplinary performance. By merging the critical with the creative, PRELUDE provides a space for artists to share, engage, and discover emerging practices in form, craft, and technology via in-process performances, conversations, presentations, and studio visits—all completely free and open to the public.
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @preludeNYC and join the conversation using #prelude2018!
All PRELUDE programs will be livestreamed. Please visit Howlround.com on event days.
PRELUDE 2018 STAFF
Curators: Andrew Kircher with Frank Hentschker
Producer: Alyssa Simmons
Assistant Producers: Augustus W. Cook II & Zach Longstreet
Panelist/Scholar Manager: Raquel Palmas
Associate Managing Director, The Segal Center: Yu Chien Liu
Design Coordinator: Mike LoCicero
Website Design: Moein Shashaei
Photographer: Maria Baranova
Front of House Manager: Ilayda Akin
Technical Director: Mike LoCicero
Assistant to Technical Director: Qian (Carolyn) Su
Technicians: Stanley Mathabane, Jenstar Hacker, Jack Scaletta, Yamarie Mayol, Nicholas Cocks
Livestream Operator: Jackie Spaventa
Ilayda Akin (MESTC Next Generation Fellow) is delighted to work at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as a Next Generation Fellow where she stage manages the events. She is an actress that is holding a BFA in Drama and Acting from Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, Turkey. She went to Czech Republic to attend Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, Brno as an exchange student. After studying in Czech Republic, she was awarded an Acting and Theatre workshop at University of Siena, Italy. Ilayda has recently received her MA degree on Theatre History and Criticism from City University of New York, Brooklyn College.
Augustus W. Cook II is a New York based Actor, Teaching Artist and Theater Maker. He attended The Stella Adler Studio of Acting and graduated from their conservatory in 2013. He then went on to co-teach and facilitate classes for inmates, students, and people in the midst recovery through their outreach devision. Augustus recently earned dual degrees from Brooklyn College in Investigative Theatre and Mass Media Production and Marketing. Next up he’ll be assistant directing a piece for The New York Fringe Festival.
Amir Farjoun creates, performs and writes about theatre and performance. Co-created and/or performed works include Saddam Hussein – A Mystery Play (Hazira 2011, Jerusalem; featured in Theater Der Welt 2014 and Schaubühne Berlin’s F.I.N.D Festival 2015), The General and the Sea (Hazira 2014), enCOUNTERs (CCA, Tel-Aviv and Mousonturm, Frankfurt) and Debriefing II (by Public Movement, Guggenheim Museum, New York 2016). He is a Ph. D student at the Theatre and Performance Studies department at the Graduate Center, and Senior Associate of Programs at the Segal Center
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.
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.
Yu Chien Liu (Associate Managing Director, the Segal Center) is a Taiwanese professional in the field of arts and nonprofit administration. She is currently working at the Segal Center where she produces events and festivals as well as manages visiting scholar program and its Publication Wing. MPA in Arts Management, BA in Political Science.
Mike LoCicero (Technical Director/Design Coordinator) is musician, sound designer, and arts administrator with a BA in Music from Wake Forest University. Michael was the 2014/15 MESTC Next Generation Fellow and has since become an Associate Managing Director at the Segal. Mike’s band, Ladybread, can be heard where ever music streams online and live at venues across NYC.
Zach Longstreet (Assistant Producer) is happy to be on board for the 2018 Prelude Festival. Zach is a Production Manager and Producer who has been working the production world of NYC for the last 10 years at theaters like The Public, Primary Stages, La MaMA, Pearl, Signature, and NYU. He would like to thank his wife, Tacy, for all her love and support as well as his 3 awesome brothers for always being there.
Stanley Mathabane (Technician) is a multi-instrumentalist, recording artist and sound designer from Portland, Oregon. New to The City, he performs under the moniker ‘SunSon’. A firm believer in honoring shared experience, Stanley is drawn to sonic art by a love of orchestration and play. After graduating from Princeton University last year, he moved to the city to connect with artists, sound design, and create community with compassionately curated art.
Raquel Palmas is wearer of many funky hats. She is a actress, writer, production manager, producer and stage manager. She is recent Brooklyn college graduate where she was a awarded the Public Theater’s General Management Fellowship. She worked on last 2018’s UTR festival assisting various artist ranging from Erin Markey to Toshi Ragen. Over the past year she has worked closely with Kaneza Schaal and Chris Myer on Cartography a new theatrical work that explores the commonalities of migration and the concrete and metaphorical mapping at the center of worlds in motion. With art and writing Christopher Myers, the production draws on Schaal and Myers’ work with refugee youth in the United States and internationally. She is proud CUNY graduate who is honored to be working on this years Prelude Festival. Special Thanks to Andrew Kircher and Alyssa Simmons!
Alyssa Simmons (Producer) is a creative producer and manager. Most recently she was the Associate Producer on Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Her interests run the gamut from devised performance to new plays to musicals to immersive experiences and live events. Alyssa pursues projects that challenge the idea of performance, broaden the form of storytelling, and, most importantly, make the audience experience something memorable. She is a woman of two cities: her hometown of Los Angeles and her adopted city of New York. Alyssa holds a BA in Theater Studies and International Studies from Yale University and a MFA in Theater Management from Yale School of Drama. Upcoming projects include serving as the producer on the 2018 Prelude Festival and as the general management associate on the 2019 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater.
Jackie Spaventa is a videographer, editor, and multimedia artist. She explores themes that address construction of identity and Internet culture. Jackie was born and raised in the suburbs of NJ, and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a BFA in Photographic Illustration. In 2016 she interned as a creative technologist at Performance Space 122, where she developed an admiration for NYC arts non profits. She currently works out of Brooklyn, NY. www.jackiespaventa.net
Qian (Carolyn) Su (Assistant to the Technical Director) is a second-year student in Theatre History & Criticism MA Program at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She started her artistic career as a dancer followed by a period as a professional in the field of art administration, and developed a special interest in theatre, dance, digital and interdisciplinary arts. Qian is granted the scholarship by the Alliance Arts Administration (Paris) in 2015 and the Charles C. Bales’ 10 Theater History Award in 2018. She has also worked with the musical The Phantom of the Opera (Asian tour) as an assistant stage manager. Qian is originally from China and received her BA degree at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, China. She is currently the Production Intern at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and the PR assistant at Pace Gallery in Beijing.
