LIVE CULTURES 020
The year in review.
I hope this newsletter finds you well in the haze of the amorphous time warp between Christmas and the New Year. 2025 has been a year a growth and momentum to say the least. Slowly but surely, Live Cultures is hitting new milestones and opening up new doors, communities and opportunities. This time last year, I was celebrating having taking 60 people to the theater and today, that number has grown almost threefold! Personally, I’ve had the opportunity to explore more plays and theaters in NYC and share them with you all IRL. To celebrate, I wanted to take a look back on some of the highlights of the year.
FAVOURITE SHOWS OF 2025
BOWL EP: This play really exploded my idea of what a play can be. From Felicia Curry’s jaw-dropping performance as Lemon Pepper Wings, the hyper intentional sound design and music, and the stunning set, which rendered the black box theater into a derelict skate bowl, I very quickly became obsessed with Nazareth Hassan mind. Beyond the play itself, having the opportunity to bring 50 people to this show across two events and getting be in community with Naz and the cast, really validated my grand vision for Live Cultures.
THE BROTHERS SIZE: The Brothers Size was the most genuine and careful exploration of the love between Black men. Coming from the writer of Moonlight, I had high expectations but I was truly disarmed but how intricately and intimately he allowed us to see his characters and the many shades of love between them,
THEATRE OF DREAMS: So nice I saw it twice, both in London and in NYC! Theatre of Dreams felt like a movie. While the set was minimal, the dancers manipulated the theatre’s infrastructure (mainly curtains) to open up infinite portals that dragged be deeper into the pockets of the dream. As with many of Hofesh Shechter’s performances, music is never just a backing track but an integral device made possible by a live three piece band. This performance will live in my dreams forever,
SEVEN SCENES: With a backdrop of the Hudson at dusk this dance performance explored the meandering courses of various lovers through heartbreak, infatuation, betrayal, temptation, all performed to live score. It was a simple stage, that solicited big emotions.
SHOWS I MOST REGRET MISSING IN 2025
COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE: This year, was the year I explored beyond my typical performance zone of dance and invested more time seeing plays. However, my way into this play was via Baye & Asa (a choreographic duo I love) who served as the play’s movement directors. The dark comedy is a “fugue of Reaganomics, espionage, roller disco, and cults—underscored by the cryptic Syracuse, NY chapter of the Seedlings of Peace Children’s Chorus” and thankfully, the play will return in 2026 from late February to late March.
SEAGULL: TRUE STORY: I was so curious about this semi-biographical affair with of Chekov’s Seagull (admittedly, I have not read nor seen Chekov’s Seagull). I guess wartime plays felt relevant this year as the plot occurs in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine casts a shadow of censorship over Kon’s free-spirited reimagining of Chekhov’s The Seagull, the production is stripped down to a state-approved shell of its former self. Desperate to save his vision and his livelihood, Kon flees to New York. Torn between his Russian roots and a confounding American paradise, he tries to redefine himself as an artist, only to discover that regaining true freedom takes more than just a few thousand miles…
RED CARPET: This would’ve been a perfect night to get dressed up in your finest and go to the theater. As you know, I love Hofesh, and it is rare to catch Paris Opera Ballet, here in NYC and decked out in custom costumes by Chanel. For a DIY night at the theater, you can watch via Paris Opera Ballet’s digital platform.
I AM SWIMMING WITH ZAZA: Presented at Judson Arts for Malcom-x Bett’s Black Aesthetics series, Coco Villa’s piece was an exploration of intimacy between fact and the fantastical. With a small cast of six, the dancers embodied and experimented with real and imagined Jamaican/Colombian spirtual traditions, consuming the auditorium with rich washes of red and deep blue, in costumes created my Coco themself. In conclusion: Do not sleep on downtown independent theater! If like me, you missed the show, you can view the full piece here.
ON MY RADAR FOR 2026
2026 already has some heavy hitters on the line up including a performance from THE Carrie Mae Weems at Lincoln Center, La Horde’s Age of Content (I saw this earlier this year in London — its fantastic!), and Marina Abramovic’s Balkan Erotic Epic — this premiered this year in Manchester, and from what I saw this really was an epic of durational performance and scale.
YOUR FAVOURITE READS OF 2025
This year, I embraced more long form writing, which I discovered I love (especially when I have time to really sit and cook!) and it seems you loved it too! Here are your top reads of 2025. Thank you for reading!
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SUPPLEMENTS: Nazareth Hassan
Playwright feels like too small a word to describe Nazareth Hassan. My first encounter with their work was BOWL EP, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. Unconstrained by convention, Hassan’s prismatic practice fuses music, performance, image making and text to remember and imagine; to interrogate and excavate. Recently named a
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Quiet feelings
Program Notes is a new Live Cultures segment that reflects on theatre beyond the context of the stage. In this essay, I tease out some ambiguous feelings prompted by Kyle Abraham’s Park Avenue Armory Commission, Dear Lord Make Me Beautiful, performed last December.
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All that’s left to be said is thank you. Thank you for reading, sharing and showing up — let’s stay cultured in 2026!