TDF Stages

Why adventurous artists—and audiences—love artistic director Jay Wegman's offbeat programming

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When asked about his guiding principle for programming a season at NYU Skirball, artistic director Jay Wegman is delightfully direct: "I like to do the wacked-out stuff."

How wacked-out? Take these three upcoming events being presented by this hub for boundary-pushing performance, owned by New York University and located next door to Washington Square Park.

From September 25 to 27, there's All right. Good night., a multimedia documentary piece interweaving the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 730 with creator Helgard Haug's memories of watching her father fade into dementia.

On October 4, the season continues with asses.masses, an interactive experience based around a custom-designed video game. Audience members take turns at the controls, collectively guiding a herd of unemployed donkeys across a perilous post-industrial landscape. For eight hours. (Thankfully, food is provided.)

And in honor of Halloween, from October 23 to November 3, the venue will stream Theatre in Quarantine's Phantom of the Opera, a stage-cinema hybrid performed live online and inspired by the eponymous 1925 silent horror film.

These disparate offerings are all part of NYU Skirball's adventurous season, which marks Wegman's ninth at the helm. Under his leadership, the 850-seat space has distinguished itself as New York's most versatile home for innovative new work originating both domestically and abroad.

"We've carved out this niche as the place to do things that other theatres can't do, or choose not to," Wegman explains. "We let our freak flag fly."

Wegman came to Skirball in 2016 after 10 years running Abrons Arts Center, a smaller but equally unconventional performance venue on the Lower East Side. Since he arrived, Skirball has hosted shows by an impressive array of major American experimental companies, including Elevator Repair Service, The Civilians, The Wooster Group, SITI Company and Target Margin Theater.

But Wegman has also expanded the venue's international reach. The fall lineup features companies from Germany, Norway, Ireland and Belgium, and last season included visiting artists from France and Australia.

Growing up in Minnesota, Wegman’s appetite for daring international work was whetted at the Guthrie Theater in the 1980s, when Romanian artistic director Liviu Ciulei was bringing risky work to the Minneapolis venue. Many of Ciulei's choices were divisive, and Wegman has also not shied away from difficult programming.

Earlier this year, a dance piece from Austria, Florentina Holzinger's TANZ, made headlines due to its explicit content. A ballet spectacle featuring mostly naked female performers, it included a scene in which one stuck two hooks through the skin on her back and "danced" through the air, even as blood seeped from her body. (A content advisory in the lobby warned of "nudity, needles and self-harming acts.") The two-night engagement was a sold-out sensation—though not every spectator made it to the end.

"Really, it wouldn't be a Skirball production if someone didn't walk out," Wegman says with a smile.

Most of Skirball's programming, particularly the venue's international work, is scheduled two or three years out. Since Wegman can't predict political shifts or cultural trends, he focuses on booking artists he finds exciting rather than curating around a theme.

Yet sometimes unexpected resonances emerge. A 2023 run of Sean O'Casey's "Dublin Trilogy," three plays examining the Irish rebellion, found renewed relevance in their brutal depictions of daily life in a war zone amidst the violence in Gaza and Ukraine.

Skirball is also a hot spot for marathon theatre experiences. The O'Casey run included an option to see the shows consecutively, a little over six hours. Gatz by Elevator Repair Service, an eight-hour adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, played Skirball in 2019. And in 2018, the venue presented Jan Fabre's Mount Olympus: to glorify the cult of tragedy (a 24-hour performance), a Belgian piece which, as the title suggests, lasted a full day. (Patrons were encouraged to bring their own pillows.)

For Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, the creators of asses.masses, the eight-hour running time is not about endurance so much as generating real, lived-in connections among theatregoers.

"It's played from start to finish by its audience, [who must] navigate the nuances of forming a temporary collective," they explain via email. "The story is about the potential of what happens when a ragtag, spontaneous group comes together and works toward a common goal."

Meanwhile, Theatre in Quarantine unites audiences watching live online from anywhere in the world—a distinct but similarly expansive approach to widening theatre's reach.

"What's rare is their conviction that remote work merits the same ambition and institutional backing as any premiere, a belief that has allowed Theatre in Quarantine to expand what's possible while still reaching audiences everywhere," says Gelb, who broadcast his take on Nosferatu through Skirball in 2023.

Skirball's theatre is a traditional proscenium which, at a glance, would not seem to offer great flexibility for nontraditional stagings. (The late experimental theatre icon Richard Foreman once quipped that the venue was "only good for your sophomore high school musical.") But the artists find a way. Norwegian theatre company Susie Wang's Burnt Toast, a Lynchian comic thriller coming to Skirball November 5 to 8, will seat its audience onstage, using the house as the playing area.

At a time when many New York nonprofits are offering slimmed-down seasons, battered by dwindling philanthropy and rising production costs, Skirball continues to offer an impressive breadth of work. Also on tap this fall: legendary Irish actor Stephen Rea in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (October 8-19); the dance-theatre piece Infamous Offspring (November 13-15) from Belgium's Ultima Vez; and multihyphenate Jack Ferver's My Town (November 21-22), a queer reimagining of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The theatre benefits from NYU operating the venue, though the university does not otherwise fund Skirball's ventures.

"They give us the space, and we're responsible for everything else," says Wegman, adding that programming one stage means less to juggle, and that Skirball has a small staff because it's chiefly a presenting house, although it does occasionally commission work.

For global artists looking to bring their work to New York, Skirball's rising stature makes it invaluable. "My company has been touring the world for 25 years, but it is getting more and more difficult to practice that cultural exchange," laments Haug, creator of All right. Good night. "That exchange is so important—especially now as the world is drifting apart."

Wegman acknowledges that Skirball is "hot" right now, but shrugs it off, noting how quickly the tide can turn. "These things move in cycles," he says. "Skirball is on a nice cycle right now. For audiences open to taking a risk, we can be the gateway drug."

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for many NYU Skiball performances, including asses.masses, Infamous Offspring, My Town and All right. Good night.. Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.