Prelude 2026
See what's on:
Now in its 23rd year, the PRELUDE Festival returns with a new lineup of works-in-progress and critical conversations, organized by the artistic team: Alessandra Gómez-Misserian, Olivia Mermagen, and Dylan Sherman. 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, both of which have a longstanding history of supporting artists through their programming.
This expansion reflects a broader focus on celebrating the work happening across the borough—this year, PRELUDE moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It steps outside the theaters in midtown and into a hotel loft inside a former barrel factory, a converted 19th-century warehouse, and private apartments. This year's artistic cohort spans solo performance, ensemble work, contemporary dance, clown, theater, performance art, and music, and multidisciplinary work. Artists were invited to present whatever best serves their practice and the work at this particular moment. For some, that meant playing with the strangeness of these alternative spaces and making something new in response; for others, it meant presenting a full piece or sharing an excerpt of work still to come. The year’s festival in service of what each artist’s work needs at this moment.
As a featured program of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, PRELUDE presents a unique snapshot of the contemporary New York experimental theater. 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.
Wednesday October 7th
at Wythe Hotel and Private Homes
(free and open to all, first-come first-served)
![the [home] project](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/5d130b_d8127664f7f84595847b81dc56299112~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_313,h_176,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/5d130b_d8127664f7f84595847b81dc56299112~mv2.png)
Thursday October 8th
at CUNY and Private Homes
(free and open to all, first-come first-served)
Friday October 9th
at CUNY - Martin E. Segal Theater and Elebash Recital Hall
(free and open to all, first-come first-served)
Saturday October 10th
at Coffey Street Studios
(free and open to all, first-come first-served)
About Prelude
Since 2003, The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center has presented the PRELUDE Festival.
The annual PRELUDE festival is dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance. PRELUDE offers an array of short performances, readings, and screenings — a completely free survey of the current New York moment and the work being prepared for the next season and beyond—as well as new commissions and panel discussions with artists, scholars, and performers. PRELUDE is a place to discover what voices are shaping the future of theatre and performance in NYC, to observe, engage, commune, and critique.
See past archives:
Meet The Team
Alessandra Gómez-Misserian
Curatorial Director
Alessandra Gómez is a New York-based contemporary art curator working at the intersection of performance and visual art. For over a decade, she has conceived and led ambitious artistic programs for cultural organizations, commissioning and stewarding more than one hundred works across visual art, dance, theater, and music in galleries, theaters, and unconventional outdoor spaces. She leads complex, large-scale projects from concept to completion, pairing a clear artistic vision with careful execution. She believes artistic leadership begins with recognizing artistic potential early and creating the conditions for artists to pursue their most ambitious ideas. Rather than responding to existing market or institutional recognition, she invests in artists whose work she believes in. Through commissioning, collaboration, and sustained investment, she develops programs where artists can take risks, work across disciplines, and expand the possibilities of contemporary art. A key focus of her practice is directing institutional resources toward artists who have not yet had access to major commissioning opportunities.
Charlie Sas
Prelude Coordinator
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Frank Hentschker
Executive Director, The Segal Center
Frank Hentschker, who holds a Ph.D. in theatre from the now legendary Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany, came to the Graduate Center in 2001 as program director for the Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and was appointed to the central doctoral faculty in theatre in 2009. Currently executive director and director of programs at the Segal Center, Hentschker has transformed the center into the nation’s leading forum for public programming in international and U.S. theatre and theatre studies; each year, he curates and produces more than forty events—staged readings, lecture-demonstrations, symposia, works-in-progress, and conversations with theatre scholars, theatrical luminaries, and emerging voices in the international, American, and New York theatre scenes. Among the vital events and series he founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series; the annual fall PRELUDE festival, which features more than twenty New York–based theatre companies and playwrights; and the PEN World Voices Playwrights Series. Hentschker also led CUNY’s nineteen performing arts centers in founding the CUNY–Performing Arts Consortium (C–PAC), producing the consortium’s first joint festival in 2009. Hentschker edited the MESTC publications Jan Fabre: I Am A Mistake, Seven Works for the Theatre (2009) and New Plays from Spain (2013), and he served as president of the board of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art from 2005 to 2009. Before coming to the Graduate Center, Hentschker founded and directed DISCURS, the largest European student theatre festival existing today; he acted as Hamlet in Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine, directed by the playwright; performed in the Robert Wilson play The Forest (music by David Byrne); and worked as an assistant for Robert Wilson for many years.
Olivia Mermagen
Artistic Producing Director
Olivia Mermagen is originally from London, England. She writes plays and occasionally directs them, but primarily watches other people direct other people's plays in various associate/assistant roles. She is an Artistic Producer at Coffey Street Studio in Red Hook and received her BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.
Johnny Gasper
Technical Director
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Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Digital & Web Producer, The Segal Center
Gaurav Singh Nijjer (he/him) is an Indian theatre-maker, creative technologist and multidisciplinary designer, and one-half of the Delhi-based arts collective Kaivalya Plays. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Performance, Technology and Equity (PTEQ) at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, researching the dramaturgy of distance-based performance with a focus on hybrid, intermedial and networked performance practices in the Global South. His artistic practice explores the interplay between bodies, machines and space, creating multilingual live performances, audio-visual experiences and interactive installations. His work has been supported by the Goethe-Institut India, Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi, Pro Helvetia India, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Deutsches Theater Hamburg, MediaFutures, BeFantastic India, among others. Kaivalya Plays has been recognized as a Global Creativity Pioneer by the Moleskine Foundation and Hyundai India's Art for Hope program. He is a former German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, UK-India Chevening Scholar and Salzburg Global Fellow. More information: www.gauravnijjer.com
Dylan Sherman
Assistant Curator
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Henry Alper
Front Of House
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with special thanks to
Peter Lawrence, Aidan O’Neal, and the Wythe Hotel team, and Andromache Chalfant, Michael Sharkey, and Michael Sexton from Coffey Street Studio.