PRELUDE 2026

oh-oh, here she comes ...

PRELUDE26

SOPHIE BECKER | JAKE BRUSH | DELIADELIA | NILE HARRIS | JA'MOON | JOYBOY | ETHAN EVA KARAS | KENNETH KENG | RAJA FEATHER KELLY | IRIS MCCLOUGHAN | HANNA NOVAK | ETHAN PHILBRICK | KATIANA RANGEL & JIM FLETCHER | GIANFRANCO REYES | SYMARA SARAI | ISA SPECTOR | ALEX TATARSKY | LIZ WESTBROOK | ANNA THÉRÈSE WITENBERG

PRELUDE26 Artistic Team:

Alessandra Gómez-Misserian, Olivia Mermagen and Dylan Sherman, in collaboration with Frank Hentschker. As a featured program of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, PRELUDE presents a unique snapshot of contemporary New York experimental theatre at the cutting edge. This year's edition marks an exciting expansion for the festival, welcoming two new partners in Brooklyn: Coffey Street Studio in Red Hook and the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg.

Now in its 23rd year, the PRELUDE Festival returns with a new lineup of works-in-progress and critical conversations. This expansion reflects a broader focus on celebrating the work happening in Brooklyn—PRELUDE steps outside the theater in midtown and into a hotel loft inside a former barrel factory, a converted 19th-century warehouse, and into private apartments. This year's artistic cohort spans solo performance, ensemble work, contemporary dance, clown, theater, performance art, music, and multidisciplinary work. Artists were invited to present whatever best serves their practice in this particular moment. For some, that means playing with the strangeness of unconventional spaces and making something new in response; for others, it means presenting a full piece or sharing an excerpt of a new work in development.

By merging the critical with the creative, PRELUDE provides a space for artists to share and discover emerging practices in form, craft, and technology. Since 2003, The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center has presented the PRELUDE Festival at GC CUNY. Founder: Frank Hentschker.

PANELISTS:

LINDA BRUMBACH | JAKE BRUSH | NORA CHELLEW | MORGAN GRIFFIN | EMMA ORME | DYLAN SHERMAN | CONSTANZA VALENZUELA & JACK RADLEY(ACOMPI) | BAILEY WILLIAMS | CHRISTINA YANG

PRELUDE TEAM:

Alessandra Gómez-Misserian Curatorial Director 

Olivia Mermagen, Artistic Producer/Producing Director 

Dylan Sherman, Assistant Curator 

Charli Sas, Prelude Coordinator 

Johnny Gasper, Technical Director

Henry Alper, Front of House

Molly Lambert, Segal Center

Jess Applebaum, Segal Center

Frank Hentschker, Segal Center

Alessandra Gómez is a New York-based contemporary art curator working at the intersection of performance and visual art. She is currently Consultant Public Art Curator at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where she leads the Robert W. Wilson Public Art Mural Initiative and Head Art Curator at Wythe Hotel, directing acquisitions and programs such as site-specific hotel room performances, art exhibits, talks, community life drawing sessions, and screenings. She is a Curator at Offerings, an experimental performance series at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square, and Curator for Sugar Sugar!, a large-scale outdoor performance series presented in Domino Square during June.

Olivia Mermagen lives in Brooklyn and is originally from London, England. She has made theater with Clubbed Thumb, The Tank, Rattlestick, The Civilians, Elevator Repair Service and more. She is currently the Artistic Producer of Coffey Street Studio Artist Initiative in Red Hook. She graduated from NYU Tisch with a BFA in Dramatic Writing.

Dylan Sherman is an interdisciplinary curator and producer based in New York. He has recently held positions at the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), Sugar Sugar! (New York), Performa (New York), Slash (San Francisco), and the Performance Talks podcast. Dylan's writing has appeared in publications including The Brooklyn Rail, Motor Dance Journal, Document Journal, and Platform: Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts. He currently studies contemporary time-based art and queer culture as an M.A. student in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies at Columbia University.

Charli Sas is a curator, and a PhD student in the French Culture and Thought department at NYU, where she works on carceral representations in contemporary French cinema, theater and literature. She curated Living in the Fault Lines with the photojournalist Reza, and is currently developing an exhibition with Yuji Watanabe on Japanese folklore.

Gaurav Singh Nijjer, Digital and Web Producer, Martin E. Segal Theater Center

Jess Applebaum, Associate Director of Programs, Segal Center

Molly Lambert, Segal Center Next Generation Fellow

Frank Hentschker, Executive Director and Director of Programs, Prelude Founder.

Image: Prelude Archives, photo by Tasja Keetman, "Placebo Sunrise".

NTUS National Theatre of The United States, Yehuda Duenyas and Compagny