The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY is pleased to present the eleventh annual PRELUDE Festival.  Dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre and performance, PRELUDE 2014 features an array of artists working in theatrical and interdisciplinary performance.  The festival gives audiences and artists a survey of the current New York moment via in-process presentations, installations, discussions, and workshops – all completely free and open to the public.

Curators’ Welcome

This year is different. We can say a lot of things about that: how we are all artists, how we are all women, how we met for many months over rickety-yet-modern communication systems and made meaning out of not-hearing as much as hearing. How we moved away from themes and towards something a little more like feelings.

But this year will always be different, and it’s true that there are certain things that endure. Intimacy. Longing. Honesty. Loss. Care. Endurance itself endures. If this year is a journey that we’re taking together, let those be the goalposts. All maps start somewhere.

This is what you need to know:

That we worked to develop a way of talking rather than a list of things to talk about.

That the conversation was exciting and troublesome and wide-ranging and funny and deep.

That we very much want you to be a part of it now.

Let’s step away from expertise and towards something more like touch. Let’s let theme go in favor of resistance.

Here’s to questions, metaphors, needs, and the inevitable ghosts in our machine. Thanks for joining in.

— Chloë Bass, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Sarah Rose Leonard, Allison Lyman