Firmly rooted in west Soho, around an inconspicuous corner, the heart of multi-disciplinary theater in New York City beats with the energy and enthusiasm of an athlete. Inside, you can almost feel a pulse. HERE Arts Center, initially established in 1993 by a group of young directors hoping to produce one another’s work, has evolved into a remarkable and unique incubator for theatrical alchemists. The Center fosters a rotating roster of theater, dance, music, puppetry, media and visual artists. These resident artists are given knowledge, help, and a “home” by its passionate community. HERE dedicates itself to the care, nurturing and singular vision of primarily mid-career artists. A prevailing hope is to allow the creatives to remain and grow in an otherwise harsh environment. “We lose too many high caliber people who don’t make enough to stay in the field,” sighs Kim Whitener, Producing Director. As many of the people on the staff at HERE are artists in their own right, an uncommonly symbiotic community has developed. (Read about Whitener and Artistic Director Kristin Marting on the front page).
Each year HERE Arts Center keeps so many plates in the air one can only marvel at the calm and cheer that seems to pervade:
Four to five full productions with Resident and Visiting Artists. Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues (if you’re unaware of this you must’ve been out of the country…for years) and Taylor Mac’s widely celebrated loopy extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge (which should not be missed when it returns to New York) were both developed and produced by HERE. Visiting Artists have included Janie Geiser and Susan Simpson with a puppet production of Frankenstein that The New York Times called “…that happy thing: an inspired melding of material and medium…refreshingly free of attitude and postmodern jokiness,” and Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines co-produced with Rainpan 43. The latter, a melding of surrealism and vaudeville, featured the enormously inventive Rube Goldberg-like contraptions referred to later in this article.
The annual festival CULTUREMART offers sneak peek at resident artist productions in workshop form. This past January’s schedule featured twelve cross-disciplinary, boundary-pushing works including Don Cristobal, Billy-Club Man by Erin Orr and Rima Fand “Does the classic billy-club wielding puppet long for love and escape?” the program asks. Inspired by the puppet plays of Frederico Garcia Lorca, the piece features shadow, hand, and large figurative puppetry, actors, music, and vigorous flamenco rhythms.
StartHERE—Innovative Theater for Young People, curated in collaboration with Jeffrey Mousseau, offers exposure and participation to a new generation of performers and audience alike.
The Dream Music Puppetry Program—providing development, performance, and collaboration opportunities to a broadening fellowship of puppeteers curated by the wonderfully innovative Basil Twist, and produced by Barbara Busackino.
Staged readings and other works in progress. Whew!
There were approximately 150 tri-state submissions for 2010’s five slots in HARP, the HERE Artist Residency Program. For up to three years, the lucky chosen are exposed monthly to the ongoing work, knowledge and ideas of every participant. Whether an artistic or business problem, the gathered weigh in. This includes some fifteen to eighteen principals, whatever company they’ve drawn together at various stages of development, and staff. “No one else is doing this,” comments Kristin Marting, Artistic Director. “Institutional memory is shared; new blood brought in. The artists can always stop by, sit down and ask for advice. Community means more than anything.” Marting has constructed 24 hybrid works in addition to excelling at her Artistic Director responsibilities. One wonders when she eats and sleeps.
In addition to Resident Artists, HERE offers a Supported Artists program which provides subsidized production space. Vampire Cowboys’ sell-out production of Fight Girl Battle World had the benefit of this.
Should an artist need a particular kind of collaborator, the assembled recommend one (assuming one is not present for consideration). Should he or she need actors, puppets, a piece of music, projections, a pot for the six foot Lily to climb out of, or a stage filled with Rube Goldberg-like mechanisms, it’s addressed. “They tap each other’s talents, use each other in productions,” explains Whitener. HERE offers its own artistic, technical, and administrative personnel during the process. Artists themselves are given a monthly stipend, currently amounting to about $4,000 over three years, additional fees for their CULTUREMART participation, and the entire box office of the fully realized piece, which goes towards the production budget. Each production budget is supplemented through its own fundraising at this stage. Guidance with marketing, technical and administrative issues are also offered. “It’s not just about making the art; artists need both sets of skills,” Marting reasons. This is a coalition that realizes you don’t give fish to the natives, you teach them to bait their own hooks then fish. Imagine the potential fertility of such cross-pollination, then multiply it by 150 lead artists or ensembles over 11 years of HARP! It’s as if Paris in the twenties just went on and on at its height.
Work at HERE Arts Center has received fourteen OBIE Awards, two OBIE grants, a CUNY Booth Award for artistic achievement, two Berilla Kerr Awards, two New York Innovative Theater Awards, four Drama Desk nominations, and one Pulitzer Prize nomination…so far.
A benefit evening HERE–Je t’aime, is planned for Tuesday June 8. The performance will feature an excerpt from Ex.Pgirls’s Paris Syndrom; pop-opera singler Kamala Sankaram performing a soupcon from another HARP artist Nick Brooke’s upcoming music-theater work Border Towns; plus special guest Joey Arias.
Photos from top:
Exterior of HERE Arts Center, Carl Skutsch
The Lily’s Revenge
Master Sunflower (Daphne Gaines) and Lily (Taylor Mac) photo by Ves Pitts
Somnambula, photo by Carl Skutsch
Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines, photo by Carl Skutsch
Arias With A Twist, Joey Arias, photo by Carol Rosegg
