HERE Arts Center, established in 1993 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. (See story in Playing Around)

The two powerhouse women at the helm of HERE Arts Center have wide experience in the trenches.

Kristin Marting (above, right), Artistic Director, hit the ground running straight out of NYU. She started directing at twenty-one and has continued at the rate of one or two productions every year since. She’s worked with luminary, Joseph Chaiken, and was assistant to the iconic Robert Wilson. Kristin co- founded Tony Mythic Theater Company in 1988 and HERE Arts Center in 1993. “There were four of us with no funding but friends, parents and interested patrons,” she remembers, “we started in order to produce one another’s work…the rest moved on one by one.”

Kristin became Executive Director in 1998 and in 2007, stepped sideways to the position she now holds in order to be able to do more of her own artistic work. Her particular interest is multi-disciplinary dance theater. She’s currently enmeshed in “developing a hybrid gestural vocabulary, used as an emotional signifier and choreographic element.” This is a theater person to the bone.

In 2005, after an initially under financed renovation and two years of negotiations, Kristin’s leadership efforts were instrumental in the successful purchase of HERE’s longtime home on Sixth Avenue below Spring Street (with special thanks to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Citibank). The Secure HERE’s Future fundraising campaign continues with HERE Je t’aime, a benefit scheduled for June 8, 2010.

Clearly this is a woman who utilizes both sides of her brain at full throttle. Kristin has one child who wants to be an artist…a visual artist, not a performer. Her husband, no longer in the business, was a stage manager when they met. “He got the girl and left.”

Kim Whitener had a completely different trajectory. She was a managing editor and attended graduate school in international affairs; worked in marketing, communications and production. A volunteer position with American Repertory Theater provoked something of a eureka moment and a determined professional shift. “It was an exciting time. There was Julie Taymor, Dario Fo, Robert Wilson,” she recalls. Kim was given a leg up (currently returning the gesture a hundred fold) eagerly entering the world of theater in administration, producing and management. She’s worked as an independent producer with The Builder’s Association, Big Dance Theater, and Martha Clarke, among others and spent four years as managing director of The Wooster Group. Kim became an independent producer in 2001. She partnered seamlessly with Kristin in 2007. It was after the building’s purchase but put her squarely in the thick of renovation, development and expansion. Her skills and talents coupled with Kristin’s create a happy symbiosis. Kim is divorced. She has a daughter who tried the theater but decided her interests lay elsewhere.

Together Kristin and Kim coordinate a fellowship with an annual audience of 45,000, mentor, work on their own pieces, and scout new talent both here and abroad as budget and the Visa situation will allow. “We’ve been to Copenhagen, Budapest and Moscow in the last calendar year and are out two or three nights a week looking at work,” says Kim enthusiastically. This artistic relationship is both harmonious and productive. “Kim and I share a similar sense of aesthetics and sensibilities and particular interest in hybrid work,” Kristin says. “Both of us understand the complexities around making that kind of work,” Kim adds. Mutual respect and admiration is palpable. If they weren’t so polite, they could finish one another’s sentences.

When asked what they’d like in the next ten years, the ladies spoke in one voice, “It’s not about growing in actual size. What we’d like is to be able to pay our artists and staff more—-and insurance across the board. We’d like to show only those artists whose work is generated at HERE. And not to need to rent the spaces out so often so that resident artists would have more access to them during the development of their work.” The little-community-that-could started when it was pretty desolate downtown and no one went west of Sixth Avenue. Now an organization of stature in a completely different landscape, the heart and mission of HERE remains unchanged.

“So…over and above more funding, you’re happy?” Two heads nodded in spirited unison.

For more information, go to www.here.org

Woman Around Town’s Six Questions

Kristin Marting

Favorite Place to Eat: Ed’s Lobster Bar, 222 Lafayette Street
Favorite Place to Shop: Lord & Taylor (shocking, right?)
Favorite New York Sight: Lower Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry
Favorite New York Moment: When the waiters from my fave Indian restaurant collected money and gave it to my husband and I when we came in with our new baby the first time.
What You Love About New York: The people.
What You Hate About New York: The people.

Kim Whitener

Favorite Place to Eat: Omen – a cozy Japanese restaurant with a difference on Thompson Street
Favorite Place to Shop: When things are on sale, the designer boutiques on East 9th Street
Favorite New York Sight: The whole city from the air when flying in or out on a clear day. It’s such a feast for the eyes.
Favorite New York Moment: My own personal walking tour—of neighborhoods, parks, riversides. There’s always something new and surprising.
What You Love About New York: Its international, multiple personality.
What You Hate About New York: The trash—when I first moved here, I kept trying to do my part by picking it up wherever I went….I soon got over that.