NEW YORK CITY: A new festival designed to celebrate global exchange and cultural expression has been announced. Founded and directed by Frank Hentschker and Elena V. Siyanko, Down to Earth (Aug. 29-Sept. 7) aims to “transform the experience of place with outdoor creation” in New York City parks and public spaces throughout Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. The programming includes on-site performances, workshops, and street arts from 14 cultural community organizations, as well as seven international productions, City University of New York’s annual Prelude festival-within-a-festival (featuring theatre, dance, interdisciplinary, and mediatized performance), participatory events, and symposia exploring migration, diversity, social justice, theatre as resistance, intergenerational alliance, climate change, and imperiled democracy.
According to its directors, based at the Martin E. Segal Theater (METC) and the CUNY Graduate Center, the festival aims to affirm the critical role of art for the economic, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers. “Citizen expression beats at the heart of our artistic vision,” Hentschker and Siyanko said in a joint statement. “Outdoor creations, international contemporary circus, and in-situ participatory performances…are powerful expressions of communal space, championing public assembly, and democratizing access to the urban commons. Down to Earth is a crucible of ideas in action, forging connections between community organizations and CUNY Stages.”
International director Milo Rau will present Resistance Now, a one-day conference and town hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, on Sept. 2. For urban planning professionals, open space enthusiasts and practitioners, artists, funders, and scholars, In Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly will be a conference on theatre and performing arts in public spaces at LaGuardia Community College on Sept. 3.
Works by international artists include French-Congolese high wire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga of Cie Basinga, circus performances by Senegal‘s only circus troupe SenCirk and Le Cirque Kikasse, performance art by Théâtre de l’Entrouvert’s Elise Vigneron, U.K. production studio Kaleider, and Parini Secondo, and Poetic Consultations, a collaboration with Τhéâtre de la Ville featuring New York-based immigrant artists, dancers, and musicians performing in English, Spanish, French, Wolof, and Chinese.
Prelude will feature works by Elfriede Jelinek, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Robert Lyons, the D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Radical Evolution, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in collaboration with Kyiv Contemporary Music Days, New York City Players with Katiana Gonçales Rangel and Katie Brook, and the Eagle Project‘s Opalaniete, Danielle Jagelski, and Ash Marinaccio. The Down to Earth Festival is designed and produced by a shared leadership team of experienced theatre administrators, executive producers, comprising Elena Siyanko, Meg Araneo, Frank Hentschker, and Natalie Rine.
Partners include New York City Parks (including Hudson River Park and Marcus Garvey Park), the Coalition of Theaters of Color (CTC), the Clemente Center, the Alliance of Teatros Latinos NY, South Street Seaport Museum, Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Agger Fish Building, Culture Lab LIC, the Green-Wood Cemetery, the Bushwick Starr, the MasterVoices Symphonic Choir, CUNY Stages Theaters, and Classical Theater of Harlem. Global partners include the French Cultural Services and Villa Albertine, Institut Français, Québec Government Office in New York, Instituto Italiana di Cultura, Milo Rau’s Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), ex-officio director of Berlin Festspiele Thomas Oberender, and Τhéâtre de la Ville.
The MESTC and its leadership previously founded the World Voices Festival in 2004 and presented more than 100 works for the screen by theatre artists from over 50 countries in 2022 as part of the seventh Segal Center Film Festival. Down to Earth seeks to expand access to cultural expression, privilege public assembly, and combat the injustices inherent in socioeconomic exclusion. Free programs will be offered for students, youth, immigrant communities, and families underserved by traditional cultural institutions, with a detailed schedule online.
