PROGRAM
>Down To Earth Festival
August 29 to September 7, 2025
New York City's First International Festival of Multidisciplinary Creation in Public Spaces
Down to Earth brings world-class international performance, theater, contemporary circus, an opera installation and participatory events —absolutely free—directly to New York City’s vibrant, diverse communities. A festival that democratizes cultural expression, our inaugural season runs from August 29 – September 7, 2025.
Partnering with NYC parks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens and working collaboratively with more than 10 dynamic cultural and community organizations, we are staging performances and workshops across multiple urban spaces. Contemporary circus and in-situ street arts are ideal for reaching new audiences: they are more than performance and are a radical reimagining of public space.
Dedicated to innovative expression and audience participation, these art forms stand as powerful assertions of communal space, champion public assembly, and democratize access to our shared urban commons.
Citizen expression beats at the heart of the Festival's artistic vision. Down to Earth is a crucible of ideas in action, forging connections between community organizations and CUNY Stages, affirming art’s critical role in the economic, political, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers.
Down to Earth seeks to expand access to cultural expression, privilege public assembly, and combat the injustices inherent in socio-economic exclusion. Central to the festival's mission is our commitment to dismantling cultural barriers by offering free and subsidized programs for students, youth, immigrant communities, and families. By attracting a diverse public to free street arts and in-situ performances that are accessible and inviting, the festival will redress the shortcomings of an expensive system of cultural dissemination.
In opposition to NYC's current performing arts landscape, where high costs have reduced many venues to rental facilities or limited seasons, Down to Earth takes a novel approach. With the majority of work presented in public spaces, our strategy focuses on sharing resources and building coalitions with CUNY Stages, NYC parks, and The Coalition of Theaters of Color, among other organizations. We plan to unite these spaces through joint presentations in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, fostering visibility and cooperation, while focusing on access for students, families, and a variety of theater audiences.
This Festival would not be possible without the civic commitment and leadership gift of Marvin A. Carlson, the distinguished theatre historian and CUNY Graduate Center Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Performance.
Founder and Co-Director, fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu
Founder and Co-Director, esiyanko@gc.cuny.edu
Advisor to the Festival and Conference Co-Director, ruth@wiklerarts.com
>Festival Program
The 2025 Festival features seven international productions, workshops, interactive events, local presentations of PRELUDE, a festival-within-a-festival, focusing on artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance, and two symposia that explore themes of migration, diversity, social justice, theatre as a tool of resistance, intergenerational alliance, climate change, and our imperiled democracy. Performances will be held across various New York City parks and public spaces.
August 30 & 31
September 6
HIT OUT by PARINI SECONDO (Italy), a choreographic and musical composition built around the jump rope repurposed as a rhythmic and choreographic percussive instrument. In the dual athletic and rhythmic nature of the jump rope, with HIT OUT Parini Secondo elevates the intimate practice of training into a performative action: the hammering succession of rope strokes morphs into the drumbeat of rebellion against those forces that would have us lie motionless on the ground with our eyes closed. August 30, 31, 6:30 PM, in partnership with Culture Lab, LIC.
September 3, 4, & 5
A dynamic circus show with high-level acrobatics, contagious energy, and breathtaking balancing acts… all on their extraordinary food truck! The troupe transforms tables and chairs into a balancing tower 30 feet in the air, creating comic chaos as they clean their truck and trampoline, and flooding the area with popcorn. A light-hearted tour de force sure to tickle your inner child and thrill your kids. Contemporary circus is an infectious performance art hybrid, employing elements of acrobatics, theatre, music, comedy, and improvisation to fashion narrative and engage audiences of all ages and backgrounds. It expands access to cultural expression, encourages public assembly, and unifies communities. September 3, 5:00 pm: Abolitionist Place, Downtown Brooklyn. September 4, 6:30 pm: Culture Lab, LIC. September 5, 3:00 pm: LaGuardia Community Greenway, Long Island City.
September 4
Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga is one of the world’s few female artists walking the high-wire. Basinga's SOKA TIRA OSOA (literally "pulling the rope") takes its name from the traditional “tug of war,” a sport in which two teams pull on the opposite ends of a rope, each trying to drag the other team across a line drawn in the middle. But Basinga turns the experience into a collaboration between the artists and audience-participants. At the outset, the tightrope walker ‘s wire lies on the ground, and it is the audience members who life, stretch and stabilize the wire into a tightrope. Then Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga performs her poetic, breathless, spectacular balancing act, accompanied by a pop-up band of local musicians, professional and amateur. "It takes many to be many." Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga will carry out her breathtaking crossing in the South Street Seaport’s historic waterfront district, a feat of balance and imbalance, aided by her audience and the pop-up band’s auditory “ground track.”
September 6 & 7
ARCH by Kaleider (UK), an installation opera. In partnership with NYC’s Master Voices and The Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, September 6 & 7, 2025. Kaleider’s ARCH is an attempt to build a freestanding arch, made two-thirds of concrete and one-third of ice, witnessed by a vigilant choir of human voices. Touching audiences with themes of death, renewal, and hope, ARCH points towards the extraordinary, yet flawed, systems humans create: language, economies, architectures, democracies – and, inevitably, to the impact of these systems on our ecosystem and ourselves. Kaleider's ARCH event unfolds under the open skies, a thought-provoking performance enchantingly accompanied by the watchful singers.
August 31
September 7
A participatory project/performance by Elise Vigneron with a group of up to 40 people -- and feet cast in ice. “Traces” represents a human community, featuring thirty participants of all ages, through the image of a choir made of ice feet. A plastic and choreographic project that connects us and makes us sensitive to the world we live in. Through an ephemeral and collective performance conceived for a public space, Élise Vigneron in collaboration with circus artist Eleonora Gimenez question the ecological stakes and the traces left by human beings as they pass through the world. The participants, their feet cast in ice by the artistic team, are the actors of this choreographed installation. The singularity of each member, their bodies and the individual stories, form a chorus and discover their collective identity. The ice mirrors the fragility of the world and its transformation into water, the ephemeral nature of human experience and narrative. TRACES: With a performance scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, August 31 at 3:00 PM, at The Bushwick Starr. Sunday, September 7 at 3 PM at Hudson River Park.
September 3 & 5
ANCRAGE (anchoring) and Duo SenCirk by Compagnie SenCirk, Senegal's only circus troupe, founded by former street child Modou Touré, a circus-dance-acrobatic-balance-inspired performances about identity and returning to one’s roots.
September 4 & 5
In partnership with The Clemente Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, Rivington Street branch; South Street Seaport Museum; McNally Jackson Bookstore South Street Seaport Plaza; Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem; and additional locations TBD. Presented in English, Spanish, French, Wolof, and two other languages. A poetic consultation is a 20-minute individual conversation with an artist. It begins with a simple question: "How are you?" Based on the answer a poem, a dance or a music is selected by the artist as a "poetic prescription" and read or performed, by phone, or in the streets and public gardens of the city, wherever possible. Initiated as a means to combat isolation and create activities for artists during the first lockdown, the project has evolved in different forms, always remaining free of charge for the public.
Milo Rau's RESISTANCE NOW! How do public cultural organizations cope with the rise of extremes? A town hall at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center CUNY.
In Via Publica: Performance and Public Assembly, a conference on theatre and performing arts in public spaces, at LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City.
September 2
Milo Rau’s RESISTANCE NOW! tour will stop in New York City at the Segal Center, on Tuesday, September 2, after several previous events across Europe. As an internationally recognized theatre director and artistic director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, Milo Rau along with Frank Hentschker will lead a day-long symposium that will connect political developments in Central and Western Europe and Latin America with those unfolding in the United States and their impact on the cultural sector. The symposium will introduce attendees to Rau's School of Resistance, a project that fosters international collaborative solidarity in the face of global threats to artistic freedom. DOWN TO EARTH will bring artists, activists, researchers, philosophers, politicians, and local guests into the conversation to share their visions of how to participate in a global, solidarity-based response to this charged contemporary moment. The symposium on September 2 will be accompanied by a reading of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek’s play ENDSEIG: The Second Coming featuring Nicole Ansari-Cox. The staged reading serves as an example of how artistic intervention works within the RESISTANCE NOW project. The event is free and open to the public. It is co-produced by the Martin E. Segal Center and Milo Rau’s Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna and part of RESISTANCE NOW TOGETHER.
September 3
A one-day conference on theatre and performing arts in public spaces. Wednesday, September 3, 2025. LaGuardia Community College Performing Arts Center (LPAC)
A Lenape Creation Story of Turtle Island theatrical piece conceived by Eagle Project. Written & performed by Opalanietet. Music composed by Danielle Jagelski / directed by Ash Marinaccio. Join us at sunset and witness the Lenape Theatre Collective EAGLE PROJECT performing a musical and immersive retelling of a Lenape creation story of Turtle Island in Inwood Hill Park at the Hudson River--where the landscape has not changed for hundreds of years. EAGLE PROJECT will offer a blessing while acknowledging and celebrating the island of Mannahatta. Conceived by Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape theatre artist, Opalanietet, A LENAPE CREATION STORY features text that is centuries old along with new music by Oneida Nation and Ojibwe composer, Danielle Jagelski of Renegade Opera/Simmer Arts. Bring a blanket, food and beverage and be with community. Free and open to the public.
"Get-low, gliding, bone-breaking, connecting, pauzin, waving: Even the language of flexing, a street-dance style born in Jamaica and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, pops with energy." Join Quamaine Daniels and Reggie Gray's iconic FLEXX dance at Brooklyn Bridge Park where the collective will mesh movement, music, words while painting a canvas using dance shoes as urban street brushes. All while the sun sets. Followed by a battle and music by FLEXN DJ. Bring your dance shoes, food, drinks and a blanket.
A live English reading of Elfriede Jelinek’s new play Endsieg: The Second Coming—a response to the re-election of Donald Trump. Translated by Gitta Honegger. Featuring Nicole Ansari-Cox and directed by Milo Rau. The reading will be followed by a Q&A with Milo Rau, moderated by Frank Hentschker, Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Democracy is in crisis, and the public is confused. Elfriede Jelinek responds to Donald Trump’s second election victory with a powerful new text: Endsieg: The Second Coming—a grim sequel to Am Königsweg / The Burgher King, her play about the U.S. election eight years ago. Jelinek depicts how Trump’s followers view the “new old king” as a divinely chosen redeemer. But the king is not alone. Lurking behind him are political and economic cliques, each vying for his favor—and with one another. Meanwhile, resistance is crumbling: “I say there is nothing more, there is nothing else, the other no longer exists, there is nothing to see, there is only the one left,” declares the blind seer. So what remains, beyond Jelinek’s relentless dissection of our times?
New York theatre artists Meropi Peponides and Beto O'Byrne will ask random park visitors and DOWN TO EARTH audiences to sit in a circle to discuss what needs to be changed—and write down the demands of the people of New York on a large white notepad. The results will be forwarded to newspapers, as well as to zlocal and national politicians. In the 1980s, Solidarność (Solidarity) was a broad anti-authoritarian social movement in Poland, using methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of worker’s rights and social change. The Polish Government attempted in the early 1980s to destroy the union through the imposition of martial law in Poland and the use of political repression. On the first day of the strike dock workers in Gdansk sat in a circle at the shipyard and wrote the most urgent demands of the workers on a 4 x 8 plywood sheet. The sheet is now a centerpiece of the Solidarność museum Gdansk.
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A soloist on stage in a duet with an invisible counterpart. The musicians are separated by place, time, and war. One plays live in New York, the other appears via a recording made earlier in Kyiv. This format was first realized in November 2024 as a “signal” from wartime Kyiv to peaceful Berlin. In its current edition, that same signal now travels across the ocean to New York. The Ukrainian musician does not know whether the dialogue with his counterpart will succeed. In New York, it unfolds as a conversation the other side cannot hear. The musical experience of the evening will suggest a complex entanglement of pieces from composers Anna Arkushyna, Ihor Zavhorodnii, and Albert Saprykin in their attempt at personal and collective research on the topic of fragile connections and uncertainty in dialogue during the war and beyond. Presented by Leah Batstone and the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in collaboration with Kyiv Contemporary Music Days, in partnership with The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center.
A documentary theatre work by and about professional nannies in New York City. In 2024, theatre artists Katie Brook and Katiana Rangel interviewed a group of immigrant childcare workers about the joys and challenges of their jobs, shaping these stories into monologues that the nannies proudly performed themselves. In 2025, in response to the escalating threat to immigrants, Brook and Rangel re-cast the piece with esteemed, white, American citizen actors to continue to share these stories. Created by Katie Brook and Katiana Gonçales Rangel, in collaboration with Inde Ramsaran, Rocío Piamonte, Maryory Rodriguez and other nannies from Latin America and the Caribbean. Featuring Jim Fletcher, David Gould, Richard Maxwell, Dick Toth and Ben Williams. Song by Nana Crist.
Brilliant Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera will share early excerpts of her new Galileo Brecht workshop project. The stage is the stunning setting of the Agger Fish Corp. building, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, once the site of shipbuilding—like the Arsenale in Venice where Galileo worked in 1593 as consultant, advising military engineers and instrument makers, and helping with shipbuilding and related problems like ballistics. Science, politics and religion were part of the culture wars of the 16th century. When do we need to stand up for the truth and for what we believe in? And when are we forced to lie to save our lives so we can eat a piece of chicken? 20th century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht’s iconic play, Life of Galileo, reflects about the life and times of Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo di Galilei (1564–1642), who is brought to the Vatican in Rome for interrogation by the inquisition. Upon being threatened with torture, Galileo recants his teachings that the earth is round and revolves around the sun. His students are shocked by his surrender in the face of pressure from the church authorities. Brecht, after immigrating in 1941 to the Untied States from Hitler’s Germany, translated and reworked the first version of his play in collaboration with the actor Charles Laughton. The result of their efforts was the second, less optimistic "American version" of the play, entitled simply Galileo. In 1947, shortly after the opening of Galileo in Los Angeles, Brecht himself was subpoenaed in the US by the House Un-American-Activities Committee. He testified before HUAC on 30 October 1947 that he never was a Communist party member, and the next day took a flight to Paris and lived in Switzerland before returning to Germany in late 1948.