PRELUDE 2026: An Independent Producers Roundtable

Please note that this event is first come, first served.

This panel brings together independent producers from theater, dance, and interdisciplinary practice to consider what it means to produce outside the institution at a moment when the institutional model is changing. Self-producing is where much of the city's new work now begins, and the panel takes it up as something to celebrate as well as examine, including the real difficulty of doing it well. The producers will discuss the particular challenges of alternative spaces, and how those challenges shift depending on whether the work is theater, dance, or interdisciplinary.

We will be joined by

LINDA BRUMBACH

Linda Brumbach (Executive Producer) founded Pomegranate Arts in 1998. She is the executive and creative producer of Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music and the HBO documentary film of the same name, Holiday Sauce, and the ALL ARTS film short Whitman in the Woods. Some of her other productions include the Olivier Award-winning remount of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, Lucinda Childs's DANCE and Available Light, Laurie Anderson's Landfall, Delusion, and Homeland, and Robin Frohardt's The Plastic Bag Store. She conceived and co-created the box set edition of the Philip Glass Piano Etudes which received a distinguished honor award for exceptionally outstanding achievement in print music publishing. Current productions include new works by Jlin, Samora Pinderhughes, William Kentridge, Ushio Amagatsu, Robin Frohardt, Ohad Naharin, Machine Dazzle, and Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire. She received the 2016 ISPA Patrick Hayes Award and the 2025 Danspace Project Rebel Angel Award.

NORA CHELLEW

Nora Chellew (she/they) is a sculptural artist and performance producer, born and based in Brooklyn. Chellew received their B.F.A. from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017. Since 2019, she has worked on a plethora of projects at the Museum of Modern Art, produced work for multiple Performa Biennials, and served as a producer for two new arts festivals, two years running: Sugar Sugar! in Domino Park (NYC) and AIR in Aspen, CO. Chellew has also had the privilege of co-producing the work of Jonathan González at The Kitchen and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Alongside programming, she has worked on scenery, props, and sculptures for various artists and designers throughout NYC. Chellew has exhibited her artwork at Parent Company, NYC; Spencer Brownstone, NYC; FiveMyles, Brooklyn; Brick Aux, Brooklyn; Spillway Collective, Philadelphia; and Phoenix Athens, Greece. She is also the recipient of a N.Y.F.A. City Artist Corps Grant and has published work with Are.na.

EMMA ORME

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Emma Orme is an Obie award-winning independent creative producer who works in close partnership with experimental artists like Lisa Fagan & Lena Engelstein (the “High Weird” - Helen Shaw) and nicHi douglas, and companies like Fake Friends and CHILD. She is currently the Producing Director of internationally-renowned theater collective the TEAM, working in close partnership with Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin and artists like Libby King, Josiah Davis, Eric Berryman, Zhailon Levingston, James Monaco, Jillian Walker, and more. Emma has a steady track-record of stewarding ambitious works from nascent idea to critical acclaim & box office hits—at institutions like New York Live Arts, BAM, Theater Mitu, NYTW, The Public, La MaMa, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Flea, Atlantic Theater, Drama League, Colt Coeur, and more. Hallmark productions include the Obie Award-winning Off-Broadway premiere of CIRCLE JERK and CHILD’s 1-800, called the Best of 2024 by Helen Shaw. A fellow of WP’s 2022-24 Producers Lab, Emma has also had wide-ranging institutional producing and fundraising experience, at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Theater Mitu, New York Theatre Workshop, The New York Times, Hypokrit Productions, Media Art Exploration, Northern Stage, and more. BA: Dartmouth College.

BAILEY WILLIAMS

Bailey Williams is a playwright, performer and producer. Recent past productions: The Family Dog, dir. Tara Ahmadinejad, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2026. Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, dir. Tara Elliott, Rattlestick/New Georges, April 2025 and Exponential Festival, January 2024. Coach Coach, dir. Sarah Blush, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2024. Events, dir. Sarah Blush, The Hearth at The Brick, December 2022. Other works have been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Portland Center Stage, Ars Nova, Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Orchard Project, NACL, the Barn at Lee, and more. She is a New Georges and Clubbed Thumb Affiliated Artist and a resident of New Dramatists through 2033. She is currently under commission with Playwrights Horizons. MFA: Brooklyn College. She is currently the co-director of The Exponential Festival, a producer at New Georges, a script wrangler at Clubbed Thumb, and a founding member of Privy Producing Collective, which offers resources for self-producing artists. With her partner, Emma Horwitz, she runs a theater company called Two Sisters. They present work created both in collaboration and individually. They also host a reading series called The Ecstatic Peephole every third Monday at Pete’s Candy Store.