EN GARDE ARTS INC

Founded in 1985 by Anne Hamburger, En Garde initiated the site-specific theatre movement in New York. Our rich history includes launching visionary artists Chuck Mee, Anne Bogart, Reza Abdoh, Jonathan Larson, Mac Wellman and Tina Landau creating iconoclastic productions that transformed spaces throughout NYC, from closing off Wall Street to transforming the landmark Towers Nursing Home. En Garde Arts has earned 5 OBIEs, 2 Drama Desks and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Over the last decade, En Garde Arts expanded its mission to include multi-media documentary theatre works, launching this effort with BASETRACK Live, a new music theatre piece by Seth Bockley with music by Edward Bilous and Michelle DiBucci about the impact of war on veterans and their families, which premiered at BAM and went on a 40-city national tour with performances at the military base Fort Hood in Texas. Following close on its heels was our production of Wilderness, a multimedia documentary theatre production about teenage mental health that was a NY Times Critic’s Pick, was presented by the Kennedy Center and was published. It is now being produced by students around the country as a way to spark conversations around mental health. With each new show, En Garde Arts partners with community spokespeople to create robust engagement activities alongside each new work to bring each piece’s broader community into the creative experience.
The Why of Now

En Garde Arts’ significant legacy of producing site-specific work has given us the unique ability to create new work during the pandemic when theatres across the city were shut down. We brought people together both artfully and safely in unconventional and under-used spaces, outdoors and in the streets. For the past two years we have developed a partnership with the Downtown Alliance business improvement district who share our goals of enlivening neighborhoods and boosting economic development through the arts. In May 2021, through the support of the Alliance, En Garde Arts in association with The Tank presented Downtown Live, a festival of nine theatre, music and performance events in a host of unusual venues; a loading dock, a covered arcade and an outdoor plaza. Then in June 2022 Downtown Stories (also created in partnership with the Downtown Alliance) invited New Yorkers to rediscover Lower Manhattan through the lens of small business owners through a new play inspired by interviewsby Rogelio Martinez. Downtown Stories also included the performance of two fictional walking tours that traversed the streets of Lower Manhattan by Mona Mansour & Jessica Holt and Eric Lockley, inspired by the history and architecture of the neighborhood. During the Covid shutdown, we also premiered A Dozen Dreams, co-created by Artistic Director Anne Hamburger; former Artistic Director of the Lark, John Clinton Eisner and visual designer Irina Kruzhilina, presented by Arts Brookfield. Staged in an empty store in Brookfield Place, A Dozen Dreams was an immersive theatre installation based on the pandemic dreams of 12 women playwrights that brought each dream to life through sets, lights, video, and sound.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, our budget has grown over the past two years. We’ve been able to expand our team, welcoming an Assistant to the Producers and Marketing & Development Manager, allowing us to support new programs, including the relaunch of our Uncommon Voices developmental series for artists creating work around social change, and a brand new developmental program called playdate for early career artists. Our newest commissioning program, the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning & Development Fund, for which we raised $100,000 will enable us to offer five mid-career theatre artists $18,000 each, over the next five years, to provide significant support and resources to bring a theatrical project to life. These developmental programs enable En Garde Arts to support the artistic community in New York City and nurture new generations of creative producers that, like us, understand art to be a vital resource in our collective recovery from the shutdown.

Current Programming

Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)
We’re thrilled that our beloved play Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) will be kicking off the 2022-23 season at La Jolla Playhouse, playing from August 30 - September 25, 2022, followed by a week of community performances at schools and centers around San Diego. Fandango, written by Andrea Thome, directed by Jose Zayas and with music by Sinuhé Padilla, is inspired by interviews with undocumented immigrants from Latin America living in New York, and tells their story of seeking community through a fandango, (a traditional gathering of music and dance) on a night when ICE raids are happening throughout New York City. After each performance of the play we host a community fandango with members of the fandanguero community, the artists, and audience members. Fandango had its world premiere in March 2020 at La MaMa. It then went on to have a five-borough tour that was unfortunately shut down due to COVID-19, leading us to relaunch the show in 2021, first taking it to Penn State Center for the Performing Arts, then to University of Maryland’s Clarice Center, and finally a return to New York City.

Uncommon Voices & playdate
Uncommon Voices, our presenting series offers developmental support for under-represented artists whose work aims to advance social change. It originally launched in 2019, was shut down due to Covid-19 and returned this year. The series supported countless artists in the early stages of developing new work, including: Pascale Armand, Kevin R. Free, Em Weinstein, Mfoniso Udofia, and others. Starting in the fall, we are expanding Uncommon Voices to support longer-form workshopped readings of new works. Upcoming Uncommon Voices include a solo show by Lebanese American playwright & performer Leila Buck. As well as a reading of a new play by Australian playwright Caitlin George entitled Helen, which contextualizes the marginalization of women in history through the stories of three mythic women whose identities are most often painted from male perspectives. Helen will be produced by The Supergeographic Ensemble Theater, a company of artists from around the world. Inspired to find continued ways to support artists throughout the pandemic, we began producing our newest series, playdate: The Ultimate Theatre Hang this summer. Hosted in Artistic Director Anne Hamburger’s backyard in Brooklyn, playdate is a series of community gatherings that celebrate excerpts of works-in-progress by early-career artists.

In Development

Behind Closed Doors (Working Title)
En Garde Arts will produce Behind Closed Doors, a multi-disciplinary immersive experience combining theatre, film and public art. We are developing Behind Closed Doors with playwright and screenwriter MJ Kaufman as the primary writer, and with theatre and film director NJ Agwuna. The project centers around a narrative exploring the secrets we keep around sexuality and the shame we feel around desire. Sexuality is often a taboo subject, not often shared or spoken about with others. The public art structures, created by designer Irina Kruzhilina will place the audience in a unique role to the performers and the films, mimicking how we might overhear others’ private thoughts, peering through windows and listening through doorways. Awarded a NY Women’s Fund grant, this project will receive a workshop presentation in 2023 and a fully-mounted production in 2024.
Untitled Red Hook History Project
En Garde Arts and The Vineyard Theatre have commissioned artistic team Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi to create a new theatrical work that will coexist in the live and digital worlds. Untitled Red Hook History Project is deeply rooted in the history of Red Hook, Brooklyn, in particular through the lens of Sunny’s Bar, which has been a staple in the neighborhood for over 100 years. The long-time owner of Sunny’s - Sunny Balzano - his marriage, the many generations of the Balzano family, the bluegrass jam and the life of the bar itself are central stories in this kaleidoscopic multimedia epic. Audiences will experience multiple plots, relationships, time periods and perspectives (including the building itself!) in this journey. Playwright Sarah Gancher, whose writing has been seen on stages worldwide, found her community and re-discovered her musician self at Sunny’s. Sarah, in collaboration with Obie-winning director and projection designer Jared Mezzocchi, will create a piece that is both hyper-local and exists in digital space. This will be the third collaboration between Jared and Sarah. En Garde intends to produce Untitled Red Hook History Project in Fall 2023 for both in-person live and virtual audiences over several weeks. The in-person component will hopefully take place in two different locations;Sunny’s and a nearby warehouse. We will work closely with the bluegrass community and the local neighborhood to ensure the people who are most affected by the piece are able to attend.

Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund
Joan Firestone is a longtime board member of En Garde Arts whose past history supporting the arts and En Garde Arts in particular is unparalleled. She is a nonagenarian who En Garde felt deserved a legacy, and in her honor we have raised $100,000. Our plans are to give an $18,000 award to a different mid-career theatre artist over the course of five years, determined by a committee that consists of Joan, Anne Hamburger, Lynn Nottage, David Henry Hwang and Linda Chapman. The first artist, Kristina Wong, received the award in December 2022.