MEET THE TEAM
Elena Siyanko
Founder and Co-Director
Veteran programmer and arts administrator, Elena Siyanko serves as Co-Director of DOWN TO EARTH. She guides the concept and international programming and oversees strategic partnerships and fundraising for the inaugural 2025 Festival program. Siyanko is Inaugural Artistic and Executive Director of PS21 /Center for Contemporary Performance (2019–2024), where over six seasons she brought more than 100 distinct productions to PS21, featuring artists and companies representing 15 countries. She produced new multidisciplinary projects and performances in public spaces, curated more than 220 events for diverse audiences, established collaborations with regional, national, and international organizations, and hosted over 30 artists’ residencies for projects in visual art, dance, music, contemporary performance, and theater. A regular attendee of international arts festivals in Europe and Latin America, Siyanko has witnessed the power of creative performance to shape the physical and social character of outdoor spaces. Over the past six years, she has been in the vanguard of curators popularizing international contemporary circus and in-situ multidisciplinary performance through her work as the inaugural Executive and Artistic Director of PS21.. Through her curation, she has brought large-scale outdoor spectacles developed during residencies and hosted dozens of North American premieres and company debuts from renowned artists and productions. A cornerstone of Siyanko’s recent tenure at PS21 is PATHWAYS, a creative placemaking and co-programming initiative that established partnerships with 27 organizations. This program created new contexts for presenting challenging work while engaging diverse audiences. Through collaborations with local and regional partners—ranging from organizations serving at-risk youth to environmental groups, town governments, and more—visionary artists connected intimately with audiences in schools, churches, libraries, city parks, village streets, farms, and parking lots. PATHWAYS became a counterweight to the restrictive, cost-prohibitive paradigm common throughout the country. By introducing large-scale outdoor spectacles and innovative collaborations, Siyanko increased attendance tenfold and raised PS21’s regional, national, and international profile.
Frank Hentschker
(MESTC), Founder and Festival co-Director
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.
Ruth Wikler
Festival Advisor and Conference co-Director
Ruth Juliet Wikler consults for the performing arts field internationally as Wikler Arts (wiklerarts.com) and serves as Director of Arts Programming, Partnerships, and Philanthropy, as well as on the Theatre faculty, at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. She also serves on numerous local, national, and international advisory boards and committees, from the International Artistic Committee of MASA (Abidjan Performing Arts Market, Ivory Coast) to the Advisory Board of Gravity and Other Myths (Australia). As Deputy Director of Programming for TOHU and the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival from 2019 to 2023, Ruth directed the MICC (International Market for Contemporary Circus) and curated contemporary circus works from Quebec and around the world for TOHU’s season as well as its Montreal Completement Cirque Festival. Prior, Ruth curated seven seasons of contemporary international theatre and performance for Boom Arts in Portland, Oregon, which she also founded, introducing Portland audiences to vital global and US artists including Kristina Wong, Adrienne Truscott, Silencio Blanco, Touretteshero, and Teatro Linea de Sombra. She previously served as Associate Director of Programs for the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (The Graduate Center CUNY) and holds an MA in Theatre from Hunter College CUNY. Her article “Vive le cirque: A Contemporary Circus Curation Primer” was recently published in TURBA Journal: Curating Live Arts.
Meg Araneo
Associate Director of Programs, Segal Center
Natalie Rine
Associate Producer, Prelude Festival
Anna Rishik
Web and Digital Producer
Anastasia Dzutstsati
Marketing and Social Media
Rob Reddy
David Stark Design Tech Supervisor