Off-Broadway's HERE has announced a return to the organization's original four-pronged leadership structure. Beginning next month, Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller will lead the the Obie award-winning institution as co-directors.
The shift echoes the founding structure of the organization. In 1993, Barbara Busackino, Tim Maner, Kristin Marting, and Randy Rollison co-founded HERE as an Off-Broadway support organization for hybrid artists and their wide ranging visions. Marting, who has remained with the company as Founding Artistic Director, will step down at the end of this month to make way for the new generation of leadership.
Said the co-directors in a joint statement, “30 years ago, visionary artists Barbara, Tim, Kristin, and Randy established a dynamic shared leadership team at HERE. The four of us are honored to pick up this legacy and launch into a reimagined future for HERE in partnership with a values-driven board full of integrity and heart. As thought leaders in the American performing arts field, we recognize this pivotal moment as an unparalleled opportunity for transformation. We are dedicated to innovative paradigms that reinvigorate arts spaces as necessary to a thriving democracy. As cultural ecologists, we will tend to HERE’s creative ecosystem, sustain space for boundless imagination, and extend a broad invitation for all to engage meaningfully in dialogue about our field and our world.”
Jesse Cameron Alick is a dramaturg, producer, poet, playwright, essayist, artistic researcher, and science fiction expert. Alick has been working in the thearer world for over 20 years, starting out as artistic director and producer at independent theatre Subjective Theater Company, then The Public Theater as company dramaturg, and most recently the associate artistic director at The Vineyard.
Annalisa Dias is a Goan-American transdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and award-winning theatre-maker working at the intersection of racial justice and care for the earth. She is a co-founder of Groundwater Arts and recently was director of artistic partnerships and innovation at Baltimore Center Stage.
Lanxing Fu is a Chinese-American, multidisciplinary theatre artist rooted in social practice. She is a writer, producer, performer, and educator, and Co-Director of Superhero Clubhouse, an interdisciplinary collective creating theatre for climate justice.
Lauren Miller is a theatre director, producer, arts advocate, community organizer, and fundraiser. She has over a decade of experience in cultural advancement for The Bushwick Starr, the Irish Repertory Theatre, and TACT/The Actors Company Theatre. From 2011-2015, Lauren developed 20 original plays as producer of the newTACTics New Play Festival.
HERE specializes in producing new, hybrid performances that integrate multiple artistic disciplines, including theatre, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art.
Their standout productions include Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Taylor Mac’s The Hang and The Lily’s Revenge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Robin Frohardt’s The Pigeoning, and Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique.
Since its founding in 1993, HERE and the artists it has supported have received 18 Obies, two Bessies, five Drama Desk Nominations, two Pulitzer Prizes, four Doris Duke Awards, seven Tony Nominations, and two MacArthur Fellowships.
Visit HERE.org for more information.
