En Garde Arts

En Garde Arts is a New York City-based theatre company, and a pioneer in the field of site-specific theatre. They are an artist-centric company that supports playwrights, directors, composers and designers in creating new work from the ground up. “They invite artists to think deeply about the stories they choose to tell and the physical sites where they belong to meet audiences where they live and work, spark conversations that explore a range of perspectives, and build an inclusive community”. Founded in 1985 by Artistic Director Anne Hamburger, the company was New York's first exclusively site-specific theatre, leading audiences to unexpected locations across the city for innovative, contemporary, highly visual new work. En Garde's productions earned six Obie Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Special Outer Critics Circle Award and the Edwin Booth Award.

En Garde Arts in the 1980s and 1990s
From 1985 to 1999, Hamburger commissioned playwrights, directors and composers to create theatrical pieces for architectural sites and neighborhoods. The roster of En Garde's alumni artists includes playwrights Charles L. Mee, Mac Wellman, María Irene Fornés; composers David Van Tieghem, Jonathan Larson; directors Michael Engler, Tina Landau, Anne Bogart, Reza Abdoh, Jim Simpson and Bill Rauch; and actors Carl Hancock Rux, Fiona Shaw, Fisher Stevens, Tyne Daly and Jefferson Mays. Intrepid audiences followed their work to a variety of locations, including Central Park, the Meatpacking District, Penn Yards, East River Park, Pier 25, the Chelsea Hotel, the Victory Theater (New Victory Theatre), and the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets in Lower Manhattan.

In 1989, En Garde produced a series of three plays at the Dairy, Belvedere Castle and Bow Bridge (Central Park) in Central Park to great critical acclaim. Obie Awards for Best New American Play and Best Director were given to Bad Penny playwright Mac Wellman and director Jim Simpson. The New York Times wrote, “Moving environmentally through the streets and buildings of Manhattan, En Garde Arts is an invigorating urban presence.” The following year, Wellman's play Crowbar became the first legitimate theatrical production to be held in 42nd Street's Victory Theatre for 60 years. Designed and built for Oscar Hammerstein in 1900, the theatre's elaborately decorated interior remained intact despite decades of neglect, including 20 years as porn theatre. Crowbar was produced before 42nd Street's redevelopment, and En Garde Arts could not find a cleaning company willing to take on the job, so a group of volunteers cleaned the interior to make way for Mac Wellman's new play. Directed by Richard Caliban with music by David Van Tieghem, Crowbar won Obie awards for En Garde Arts and actor Elżbieta Czyżewska, and was granted a special award by the Outer Critics Circle.

Now firmly in league with New York's most influential and innovative theatre companies, En Garde continued to produce iconoclastic, critically acclaimed, award-winning work throughout the 1990s. Reza Abdoh & Mira-Lani Oglesby's spectacular, AIDS era cri de coeur, Father Was a Peculiar Man took place over 9 distinct locations through the Meatpacking District, long before its gentrification. In an abandoned Victorian hospital on West 106th Street, Charles L. Mee's Another Person Is a Foreign Country confronted the social marginalization of unconventional people; in fact, it was a celebration of difference, played like a beautiful human symphony under a blanket of stars. Director Anne Bogart's cast included a blind choir with seeing-eye dogs, a group of emotionally disturbed rock musicians, and a man and woman, both 3’ tall, all staged against the Gothic, empty Towers Nursing Home (New York Cancer Hospital). The evening ended with a stunning waterfall cascading down the building's stone facade.

En Garde would win further Obie Awards for Tina Landau & Charles L. Mee's Orestes in the Penn Yards, and Trojan Women in East River Park Amphitheatre. Deborah Warner's adaptation of The Wasteland with Fiona Shaw earned two Drama Desk Awards. Hamburger used the New York Stock Exchange as a backdrop for JP Morgan Saves the Nation by composer Jonathan Larson. On opening night, he slipped her a cassette tape of the work he was just developing; it would become the musical phenomenon RENT. Hamburger was recognized with the Edwin Booth and Lee Reynolds Awards for the impressive body of her work. In 1999, she was offered and accepted the post of artistic director with the La Jolla Playhouse. Within six months of moving to California, she received an offer to establish a new creative division for the Walt Disney Company, where she remained until returning to New York.

Re-launch (2014 – present)
Basetrack Live 

Hamburger re-launched En Garde Arts in 2014 with Basetrack Live, a multimedia fusion of music, film, photojournalism and performance, that explores the impact of war on veterans and their families. The show was developed in collaboration with the corpsmen and families of the 1st Battalion 8th Marines and inspired by the website One-Eight Basetrack (a citizen journalism project featuring the work of Teru Kuwayama, Balazs Gardi and Tivadar Domaniczky). The production premiered in Austin, TX in September 2014, and toured to over 40 cities nationally with a New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Veterans Day of 2014. Basetrack Live was invited to Fort Hood Military Base in Killeen, TX at the invitation of the Commanding General to encourage active-duty soldiers to avail themselves of mental health services. The production served as a resiliency program to prepare soon to deploy soldiers, highlight existing challenges and raise awareness of Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury warning signs for senior leaders and their soldiers. In talk back sessions held after each performance, the producer, actors, and medical treatment facility treatment subject matter experts answered audience questions, discussed global treatment approaches, and described available services for treatment. Six months of research (three pre- and three post-performance) by the Intrepid Behavioral Health Center on base determined a 36% reduction in stigma surrounding seeking services for mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Basetrack was also named Best Theatre of 2014 in The New York Times.

BOSSS (Big Outdoor Site Specific Stuff)

En Garde Arts continued to grow, creating the highly anticipated Emerging Arts Festival BOSSS (Big Outdoor Site Specific Stuff) in the fall of 2015. Beginning in early 2015, Hamburger gathered multiple artists together once a week to brainstorm ideas. Hamburger mentored the artists as pieces began to take shape, working with the Hudson River Park as a performance space. Completely free to the public, BOSSS programming included Given The Present, The Future Does Not Depend On The Past (written by Sam Alper, composed and lyricized by Deepali Gupta, and directed by Jimmy Maize), The Visitors (written and directed by Barbara Cassidy and choreographed by Johari Mayfield, with Jessica Corbin as Choral Leader), Moms (written by Sarah DeLappe [playwright of The Wolves] and directed by Morgan Green), The Queer Garden (written by Kenny Finkle, directed by Jessie Geiger, and produced by Louise English), We Were Wild Once Episode 6: Talks With A Drunk (directed by Sanaz Ghajarrahimi), Night, Janitor, Carousel (directed by Ellie Heyman), An Evening With Bina48 (directed by Andrew Scoville, designed by David Tennant and Kate Freer), This Place (directed by Lee Sunday Evans), Gnomads of the Garden (written by Stephanie Okun), Long Time (conceived by PopUP Theatrics, written by Peca Ștefan, and directed by Tamilla Woodard), and Ghost Card (choreographed by Megan Weaver and Hassan Christopher).

Wilderness

In 2016, En Garde Arts premiered Wilderness at the Abrons Arts Center in New York, NY. This multimedia documentary theatre piece speaks to the search for connection between parents and children in families amongst the complexities that accompany life in the 21st century, including mental health, addiction, and gender and sexual identity. Inspired by co-writer and executive producer Anne Hamburger's own experiences with her son, this piece compiled real-life interviews, research, and the blending of documentary and fiction to portray the complex journey that parents and children embark in seeking therapy and communication. Wilderness toured across the country, was published by Dramatists Play Service and is now being licensed by colleges and universities around the world. In 2014, Wilderness was named Critics’ Pick in The New York Times, which called it a "terrific, moving new multimedia theater piece."

Red Hills

In 2018, En Garde premiered Red Hills (written by Asiimwe Deborah Kawe and Sean Christopher Lewis, directed by Katie Pearl) in New York, NY. Red Hills was a site-specific piece exploring the questions of “Who has the right to tell a story?” and “Whose story is it?” through the lens of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Red Hills tells the story of an American missionary named David and a Rwandan tour guide named God's Blessing who meet as teenagers during the Genocide. Back in the U.S., David writes a book called Dogs of Rwanda that becomes famous but is riddled with lies and omissions. When God's Blessing happens upon the book 20 years later, this propels David to return to Rwanda, reconnect with God's Blessing to relive the past and learn the meaning of forgiveness. The production took over a 20,000 square foot empty and raw floor of a downtown office building located at 101 Greenwich Street, transforming it into multiple sites, including an NGO-headquarters, the Kigali airport, Nyamata Genocide Memorial and the red hills of Rwanda. One of the most meaningful responses to the production came from a Genocide survivor who was so moved by the show that she asked if she could bring in a photograph of her own family to add to the altar of remembrance in the set.

En Garde Arts’ Community Engagement Coordinator Heather Cohn, along with Red Hills Community Engagement Facilitator Channie Waites, crafted post-show panel discussions with experts on Rwanda and healing trauma. On June 20, 2018, audiences were treated to a Rwandan dinner prior to a benefit performance and encouraged to talk about their reactions to the play, their thoughts on what stories need to be heard & who should tell them, what communities, groups, and/or perspectives they least understood, and whose stories they wished to open themselves to hearing.

Fandango for Butterflies (And Coyotes)

Inspired by interviews with undocumented immigrants from Latin America living in New York, Fandango for Butterflies (And Coyotes) takes the form of a fandango—a community celebration where stories are brought to life through live performance, music, and dance. Written by Andrea Thome, with direction by José Zayas and original music by Sinuhé Padilla, Fandango premiered at La MaMa in February 2020, and was a New York Times Critics Pick. The Times called it a "sensitive portrait of the in-between: characters balancing the small joys of everyday life with the fear of uncertainty."

On the eve of city-wide ICE raids, a group of immigrants gather in an undisclosed community center in NYC for a fandango. As fear encroaches — fear for family left behind in their home countries, fear for loved ones in the middle of their dangerous journey to New York, fear of leaving the sanctuary of the community center simply just to get a bag of ice — a sense of camaraderie builds between the participants. Strangers become friends, friends become family, and the fandango plays on.

Performances were in English and Spanish with supertitles, making the show fully accessible to Spanish and English-speaking audiences. After its initial run, En Garde partnered with the NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs for its five-borough tour around New York, who had a booth at select performances which provided both immigrants and allies with resources and actionable steps. The tour was forced to close on March 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but was revived in the Fall of 2021 for a limited run at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church and a tour to Penn State Center for the Performing Arts and University of Maryland's Clarice Center.

A Dozen Dreams

In 2021, with the theaters shuttered across New York City, En Garde Arts returned to its site-specific roots to create during Covid. A DOZEN DREAMS was an immersive theatre installation based on the pandemic dreams of 12 women playwrights. It received its world premiere at Brookfield Place New York from May 13–30, 2021. The piece was conceived by En Garde Artistic Director Anne Hamburger with John Clinton Eisner and Irina Kruzhilina. The production was offered free-of-charge and attracted New Yorkers from all walks of life for a 55-minute experience through a series of twelve dream “rooms” built and gorgeously designed in a labyrinth structure. Through sets, lights, video, and sound, the rooms brought each individual dream to life, sharing intimate moments that are vital to the human connection that we lost in isolation. The design team was: Irina Kruzhilina (visual & environment design) Rena Anakwe (sound), Brittany Bland (video/projection), and Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (lighting). Playwrights included: Sam Chanse, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Emily Mann, Martyna Majok, Mona Mansour, Rehana Mirza, Ellen McLaughlin, Liza Jessie Peterson, Ren Dara Santiago, Caridad Svich, Lucy Thurber, and Andrea Thome. Maya Phillips at The New York Times described the show: “a dozen rooms exquisitely designed to replicate the surreal, chameleonic chambers of the mind at rest [with] inspired dream spaces, courtesy of the production’s outstanding designers.” The production enabled En Garde Arts to employ nearly 100 artists and arts workers and welcomed 1575 audience members over the 3-week run. It was included in The New York Times “Best Theater of 2021” roundup as a “fantastic journey.”

Downtown Live

Downtown Live was co-produced with The Tank and presented by the Downtown Alliance from May 15–16 and 22–23. This large-scale performing arts festival brought together nine performing arts groups, over 25 artists and 36 performances to three sites in Lower Manhattan over the course of two weekends. Artists included Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated writer and performer Eisa Davis with Kaneza Schaal & Jackie Sibblies Drury; artistic director of the Obie-Award-winning theater The Tank Meghan Finn with playwright/actress Kaaron Briscoe; Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway favorite playwright and actor David Greenspan and composer Jamie Lawrence; award-winning New York-based Brazilian Theater Company, Group .BR; hip-hop, spoken word and performance artists Baba Israel & Grace Galu; popular downtown music and storytelling duo James & Jerome; classical singer/musical theatre composer and performer Katie Madison; Lucille Lortel Award-winning performer Kuhoo Verma with Justin Ramos; and genre-bending songwriter, theatre-maker and solo performer Ellen Winter. The festival welcomed nearly 1,400 audience members to Lower Manhattan where many of them were seeing live performance again for the first time since COVID-19 shut everything down. Audiences were able to enjoy the vast range of offerings, some even choosing 3-show packages, as well as taking advantage of all the wonderful restaurants and sites downtown.

Downtown Stories

Downtown Stories was a series of three theatrical adventures, co-produced with Downtown Alliance, bringing “to life the secrets and stories of Lower Manhattan, both real and imagined. Its art meets anthropological expedition as audiences traverse lower Manhattan to discover new or little-known facts about downtown that provide a fresh perspective on the places we pass by every day”. It included Sidewalk Echoes by Rogelio Martinez and directed by Johanna McKeon, a play drawn from interviews with small business owners, staged at John Street Methodist Church, as well as walking productions of Uncovering Downtown: A Magical Expedition of Unrecorded Dreams by Mona Monsour and Jessica Holt, and We the People (Not the Bots), written and performed by Eric Lockley and directed by Morgan Green. All three pieces were performed over the course of June 2022.

Helen.

Presented by and performed at La MaMa, this SuperGeographics production, written by Caitlin Georges and directed by Violeta Picayo, imagines “a world of tightly-bound conventions”, where “the god of chaos watches three sisters talk about laundry, grout maintenance, and family planning as they wait for their mother’s wake to end, or a wedding to begin. Chaos undoes a button…and Helen, the youngest sister, tears loose from the constrictions of home, husbands, and obligations to seek adventure. Again and again, we see Helen grasp at opportunities only to be flung back through time to where she started. As the time loops, accumulates, and bursts, Helen is sent spiraling, banished from home, past the point of no return. A funny, feminist riff on a familiar myth, Helen. excavates our mothers from history and asks what the future holds for our daughters”. The piece ran from October 13–29, 2023.

Programs
Uncommon Voices

Uncommon Voices is a new work developmental residency program that gives artists working at the intersection of theatre and social change the tools to engage in a collaborative creative process to build stories that spark conversation and promote community. En Garde Arts offers support to artists to create genre-bending work and think deeply about the story they are telling, where it belongs and to whom it speaks. Uncommon Voices began as an intergenerational series for art, activism, conversation and community, which occurred on the first Monday of each month at The Commons Cafe in Brooklyn. Since launching in January 2019, the series has featured dozens of playwrights, directors and performers whose work is at the intersection of art and social justice. Artists that have been featured in Uncommon Voices are grappling with subject matter that has ranged from the issues of teaching teens at Rikers; misogyny and #MeToo; the climate crisis; and xenophobia. Some of the playwrights and performing artists featured in the Uncommon Voices series include Tonya Pinkins, Andre De Shields, Miranda Rose Hall, Nadine Malouf, Pascale Armand, Kevin R. Free, Danny Pudi, and Syndee Winters, among others.

ALL ARTS: Beginning in early 2020, En Garden's Uncommon Voices series was featured on WNET's All Arts program in collaboration with Emmy Award-winning producer Jesse Green. Over the course of 2020, the series received over 230,000 views across all streaming platforms. Uncommon Voices, Unexpected Places: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic suspending all indoor performances, En Garde Arts created an outdoor alternative: Uncommon Voices: Unexpected Places. This program is a site-specific continuation of the Uncommon Voices program, with En Garde returning to its roots and using the city as its stage. The first performance of Uncommon Voices: Unexpected Places featured renowned writer and performer David Greenspan in collaboration with Jamie Lawrence in Wartime Canteen for a New Era, which saw Greenspan and Lawrence performing on the stoop of a brownstone in Brooklyn in October 2020.

It continues to grow as a program with a new strategy through two development phases. Artists who enter the process for Phase One receive a commission and a sharing with a small audience in whatever form is appropriate to the piece, and artists who develop into Phase Two are provided with funding for an extended workshop with a small presentation based on the needs of the piece. Current artists in residence include Sasha Molochnikov, Samora La Perdida (with Josiah Handelman, Matthew Zwiebel and Mobéy Lola Irizarry), Irina Kruzhilina, Leila Buck, Charlene Jean (with Franklin Rankin), and Kristina Wong, the inaugural recipient of the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund.

Awards
Obie Awards (6): Bad Penny (Best New American Play: Mac Wellman) 1990; Bad Penny (Best Direction: Jim Simpson 1990; Crowbar (Performance: Elzbieta Czyzewska) 1990; En Garde Arts (Obie Grant) 1991; Orestes (Performance: Jefferson Mays) 1994; The Trojan Women (Performance: Sharon Scruggs) 1997

Drama Desk Awards (2): The Waste Land (Outstanding One Person Show, Unique Theatrical Experience) 1997

Outer Critics Circle Awards (1): Crowbar (Special Award) 1989-90

Edwin Booth Award, 1995

Staff Information
Anne Hamburger (Founding Artistic Director) founded En Garde Arts in 1985. As its artistic director and Creative Producer, she is responsible for pioneering site-specific theatre in New York in the 80s and 90s, using its streets and historic landmarks as her stage. Hamburger produced the work of artists that are now internationally renowned: Anne Bogart, Charles L. Mee, Tina Landau, Jonathan Larson and Reza Abdoh, with large scale predominantly outdoor work. In 1999 she went on to launch and run Creative Entertainment, a global division for Disney where she brought the finest theatre artists into the parks for the first time in their history. She then returned to NYC and re-launched En Garde Arts in 2014. In its second incarnation, En Garde is developing theatre that has social change at its core, assembling some of the finest most visionary artists working in the theatre today. En Garde's producing structure is highly collaborative, encouraging artists to explore storytelling through music, movement, multimedia and site-specificity.

For her work, she has won 6 Obies, 2 Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lee Reynolds Award and the Exceptional Merit in Media Award from The National Political Women's Caucus.

Anne is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women and is the recipient of an Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Political Women's Caucus. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama.

Clara Alonso (Marketing Director + Producer) is a marketing strategist, product and project manager and believer in the arts as a way to transform the world. She was born and raised in Madrid, Spain and spent almost 6 years in Munich, Germany. She has a strong multicultural background and has developed her career in the automotive world. Clara has a master's degree in Translation and Interpreting and an MBA in Marketing and Sales Management. She started working in En Garde Arts in January 2022.

Nedelle Torrisi (Development Manager + Producer) has joined En Garde Arts with development experience at the nonprofit Art Start and logistics experience as a tour manager for musical artists, and as Executive Assistant to the Vice President at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). As a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, she has released multiple albums on respected independent record labels, and performed on numerous U.S. and international tours. She is currently finishing the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. Nedelle holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music History & Literature from San Francisco State University. She started working in En Garde Arts in March 2024.

Amanda Cooper (Consulting General Manager) is an arts producer, consultant and advocate, working with a wide variety of theater and music companies around New York City and beyond. Alongside her work with En Garde Arts, companies she has, or has recently worked with include: Pearldamour, DNAWORKS, The Bushwick Starr, Concrete Temple Theatre, Sinking Ship, and The Prototype Festival, among others. Previously she was the General Manager for HERE, a multi-disciplinary arts space in Manhattan. She has also held positions at The House Foundation, Symphony Space, Theatre Development Fund, Voice & Vision Theater and the Look + Listen Festival, where she has been serving as the President since 2014.

Isabella Holmes (Business Manager) is a freelance Business Manager & Accounting Advisor for artists and small business owners.

John Clinton Eisner (Resident Creative Producer) co-founded The Lark in 1994 as a community of theater professionals dedicated to the playwright's vision. In June 2021, he collaborated with En Garde Arts on “A Dozen Dreams,” a response by 12 playwrights to the isolation of pandemic times. He divides his time between working directly with playwrights and creating strategies with artistic leaders in the United States and abroad to advance new plays into the repertoire. Trained as an actor, he began his transition to directing and producing through his experiences at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, the National Theatre of the Deaf, the Denver Center Theatre Company and Williamstown Theatre Festival (where he acted in one of Tennessee Williams’ last plays, Gideon's Point). He has led workshops at many universities and served as advisor for CEC Artslink, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Theatre Development Fund, Theatre Communications Group, National New Play Network, TheatreForum Magazine, Transport Group and the Lucille Lortel Awards Committee and on the boards of the National Theatre Conference and the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America. He received degrees from Amherst College and the National Theatre Conservatory and lives in New York City with his wife, actor Jennifer Dorr White.