HERE builds a community that nurtures artists as they create innovative new performances in theatre, dance, music, puppetry, media, and visual art. HERE strives to provide genre-blending artists with an adaptive, flexible home for developing and producing their work, and to serve curious audiences as a welcoming and accessible destination to witness groundbreaking performances, responsive to the complex world in which we live. Founded in 1993 by four artists — Kristin Marting, Tim Maner, Barbara Busackino, and Randy Rollison — HERE was envisioned as a welcoming, safe environment that could attract and launch a variety of artists. Over the past 26 years, HERE has been home to such acclaimed artists and works as Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantastique, Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge, as well as works by Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting. We have produced and presented over 1,200 original works; served over 15,000 artists; and welcomed over 1,000,000 audience members. HERE’s work and artists have received 16 OBIE Awards, 2 OBIE Grants and a CUNY Booth Award for artistic achievement, 2 Berilla Kerr Awards, 4 NY Innovative Theatre Awards, 2 Bessie Awards, 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 1 Pulitzer nomination, 6 Drama Desk nominations, 2 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowships and most recently, 7 Tony nominations. HERE remains on “Best Off-Off Broadway” theatre lists across New York City. In 2005, with the support of the City of New York and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, HERE purchased its 9,000-square-foot longtime home with two performance spaces, a lounge, and gallery. With full-scale renovations completed in 2008 and 2011, thanks to significant support from the City of New York, HERE continues to stand as a pillar of the now burgeoning Hudson Square neighborhood.

OPERA ON TAP is a women-led organization that was born in 2005 at Freddy’s Bar and Backroom in Brooklyn and incorporated in 2006 to promote opera as a viable, living and progressive art form and to support the developing artists who continue to keep the art form alive. What began as a small monthly gathering of ambitious, classically trained singers looking for more performance opportunities, has grown into a producing organization that has gained a loyal audience base and national recognition as an innovative force on the classical music scene with features in such media outlets as The NY Times, NPR All Things Considered, The Wall Street Journal, NY1, USA Today, NHK/ Japan National Public TV, Tagesspiegel, The NY Daily News, WNYC, Boston Globe, Chicago Today, Chicago Reader, the LA Times, LA Weekly, and Seattle Weekly among many others. Through its Chapter program, which now has twenty-five vibrant national (and international) chapters, OOT has created a large network of performers, creators, and supporters. We are headquartered as a national organization in Brooklyn and present a variety of programs intended to adhere to our mission of community engagement through opera. THE IMMERSIVE OPERA PROJECT (IOP) is our commissioning/development/full production program through which we are producing LOOKING AT YOU. The project is spearheaded by Opera on Tap and presented in collaboration with regional opera companies across the globe to develop and showcase new immersive works of opera utilizing immersive technologies (VR/AR/MR/XR), and also inclusive of live immersive and site-specific opera performance. IOP and has recently been inspired by the success of our virtual reality (VR) opera, The Parksville Murders, composed by Kamala Sankaram with libretto by Jerre Dye. The opera is the world’s first VR opera and in addition to receiving critical accolades, has been seen by close to 40,000 people in VR headset.

EXPERIMENTS IN OPERA is focused on re-writing the story of opera. We believe that new operas can be adventurous and fun, focused on strong and intimate storytelling, while also challenging notions of what experimental music can be. EiO invites composers, directors, designers and performers to create new work that embraces unconventional mediums, a range of durations and production scales, and explores collaboration between all types of artists working to share their visions. We bring new operas to the stage as quickly as we can, marking the urgency of artists with something important to say and the desire of audiences to be a part of the excitement of risky and rewarding work. Co-Founded in Brooklyn in 2010 by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady, Experiments in Opera has commissioned 75 new works in seven years, from 47 composers collaborating with over four hundred performers, designers and directors from the New York City artists community.  During that time we have produced events at Roulette, National Sawdust and Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, as well as at The Flea Theater, Symphony Space, Merkin Concert Hall, The Stone, Le Poisson Rouge, Anthology Film Archives and Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan.  In fall 2018, Kamala Sankaram joined EiO as co-artistic director. Experiments in Opera has presented the work of 47 composers since our first presentation including Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch, Roddy Bottom, Gelsey Bell, Georges Aperghis, Robert Ashley, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Joe Diebes, Natacha Diels, Lainie Fefferman, Miguel Frasconi, Anne Guthrie, James Ilgenfritz, John King, Daniel Kushner, Ruby Fulton, Gabrielle Herbst, Nick Hallett, Travis Just, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Joan La Barbara, Lukas Ligeti, Charlie Looker, Cristina Lord, Emily Manzo, Paula Matthusen, Anna Mikailhova, Jonathan Mitchell, Nicole Murphy, Jascha Narveson, Pauline Oliveros, Jessica Pavone, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Dave Ruder, Kamala Sankaram, Elliott Sharp, JG Thirlwell, Justin Tierney, Leaha Maria Villarreal, Dorian Wallace, Shelley Washington, Katie Young, John Zorn and the Cough Button collective.