Eisa Davis to Premiere The Essentialisn't at HERE Arts Center

Off-Broadway's HERE Arts Center has announced its 2025–2026 season, the first under its new quartet of co-directors: Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller. The season will open with the world premiere of The Essentialisn't, written and performed by Eisa Davis (Warriors).

Davis' performance art piece explores the cultural techniques that make musical expression a kind of imprisonment—or a transcendent liberation. It runs September 10-28.

In November, the theatre will present The Passion According to Janair, written by Ana Carbatti and Andressa Furletti, and directed by Furletti. The play is about the life of a domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro. Presented by Group Dot BR.

Dave Osmundsen will present his newest work BUM BUM (or, this farce has Autism) in December (Presented by EPIC Players).

January 2026 has HERE partnering with the Under the Radar Festival for Dream Feed (from theatrical band The HawtPlates), an electroacoustic song cycle that drops audiences into the humor, terror, beauty, and allure of an active mind within a slumbering body.

Puppet master and MacArthur Fellow Basil Twist will present two puppet festivals: Puppet Parlor in December and Puppetopia in February 2026 (with Barbara Busackino).

In April 2026, HERE will present James Scruggs' Off The Record: Acts of Restorative Justice, a participatory theatrical intervention aimed at the American Criminal Justice System, and an offering for those with active criminal records to have a free consultation with criminal justice attorneys.

HERE co-directors Lanxing Fu, Annalisa Dias, Jesse Alick, and Lauren Miller. Zayira Ray

“We could not be more thrilled and humbled by the incredible artists joining us this season,” said HERE Arts Center’s co-directors in a joint statement. “This season bridges HERE’s past and future by engaging longtime artistic collaborators and bringing many new relationships into the fold. From Eisa Davis’s afrofeminist brilliance to The HawtPlates’ psychedelic musical dreamscape to so very much more, the upcoming season at HERE is a love letter to everyone ready to dream big, love hard, and build the collective future our communities deserve.”

The season also includes a dance piece The Mutables by Kat Mustatea (October 8–12), the anti-capitalist puppet-filled rock-n-roll space opera Dimension Zero (October 21–24) by Boxcutter Collective, the devised Entangled from Society, and Constance: A Confession from Experiments in Opera.

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