En Garde Arts


En Garde Arts is a New York City-based theatre company, and a pioneer in the field of immersive theater.
Founded in 1985 by Anne Hamburger, the company was New York’s first exclusively site-specific theatre, leading audiences to unexpected locations across the city for innovative, contemporary, highly visual new work. En Garde’s productions earned six Obie Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Special Outer Critics Circle Award and the Edwin Booth Award. The company ceased operations in 1999 when Hamburger relocated to the West Coast, first as artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, and later to run a global division for the Walt Disney Company. She returned to the East Coast, reformed the company, and re-launched En Garde in the fall of 2014.

En Garde Arts in the 1980s and 1990s

From 1985-1999, Hamburger commissioned playwrights, directors and composers to create theatrical pieces for architectural sites and neighborhoods. The roster of En Garde’s alumni artists includes playwrights Charles L. Mee, Mac Wellman, María Irene Fornés; composers David Van Tieghem, Jonathan Larson; directors Michael Engler, Tina Landau, Anne Bogart, Reza Abdoh, Jim Simpson and Bill Rauch; and actors Carl Hancock Rux, Fiona Shaw, Fisher Stevens, Tyne Daly and Jefferson Mays. Intrepid audiences followed their work to a variety of locations, including Central Park, the Meatpacking District, Penn Yards, East River Park, Pier 25, the Chelsea Hotel, the Victory Theater in Central Park to great critical acclaim. Obie Awards for Best New American Play and Best Director were given to Bad Penny playwright Mac Wellman and director Jim Simpson. The New York Times wrote, “Moving environmentally through the streets and buildings of Manhattan, En Garde Arts is an invigorating urban presence.” The following year, Wellman’s play Crowbar became the first legitimate theatrical production to be held in 42nd Street’s Victory Theatre for 60 years. Designed and built for Oscar Hammerstein in 1900, the theatre’s elaborately decorated interior remained intact despite decades of neglect, including 20 years as porn theatre. Crowbar was produced before 42nd Street’s redevelopment, and En Garde Arts could not find a cleaning company willing to take on the job, so a group of volunteers cleaned the interior to make way for Mac Wellman’s new play. Directed by Richard Caliban with music by David Van Tieghem, Crowbar won Obie awards for En Garde Arts and actor Elżbieta Czyżewska, and was granted a special award by the Outer Critics Circle.
Now firmly in league with New York’s most influential and innovative theatre companies, En Garde continued to produce iconoclastic, critically acclaimed, award-winning work throughout the 1990s. Reza Abdoh & Mira-Lani Oglesby’s spectacular, AIDS era cri de coeur, Father Was a Peculiar Man took place over 9 distinct locations through the Meatpacking District, long before its gentrification. In an abandoned Victorian hospital on West 106th Street, Charles L. Mee’s Another Person Is a Foreign Country confronted the social marginalization of unconventional people; in fact, it was a celebration of difference, played like a beautiful human symphony under a blanket of stars. Director Anne Bogart’s cast included a blind choir with seeing-eye dogs, a group of emotionally disturbed rock musicians, and a man and woman, both 3’ tall, all staged against the Gothic, empty Towers Nursing Home. The evening ended with a stunning waterfall cascading down the building’s stone facade.
En Garde would win further Obie Awards for Tina Landau & Charles L. Mee’s Orestes in the Penn Yards, and Trojan Women in East River Park Amphitheatre. Deborah Warner’s adaptation of The Wasteland with Fiona Shaw earned two Drama Desk Awards. Hamburger used the New York Stock Exchange as a backdrop for JP Morgan Saves the Nation by composer Jonathan Larson. On opening night, he slipped her a cassette tape of the work he was just developing; it would become the musical phenomenon RENT. Hamburger was recognized with the Edwin Booth and Lee Reynolds Awards for the impressive body of her work. In 1999, she was offered and accepted the post of artistic director with the La Jolla Playhouse. Within six months of moving to California, she received an offer to establish a new creative division for the Walt Disney Company, where she remained until returning to New York.

Re-launch (2014 – present)

Basetrack Live
Hamburger re-launched En Garde Arts in 2014 with Basetrack Live, a multimedia fusion of music, film, photojournalism and performance, that explores the impact of war on veterans and their families. The show was developed in collaboration with the corpsmen and families of the 1st Battalion 8th Marines and inspired by the website One-Eight Basetrack. The production premiered in Austin, TX in September 2014, and toured to over 40 cities nationally with a New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Veterans Day of 2014.
Basetrack Live was invited to Fort Hood Military Base in Killeen, TX at the invitation of the Commanding General to encourage active duty soldiers to avail themselves of mental health services. The production served as a resiliency program to prepare soon to deploy soldiers, highlight existing challenges and raise awareness of Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury warning signs for senior leaders and their soldiers. In talk back sessions held after each performance, the producer, actors, and medical treatment facility treatment subject matter experts answered audience questions, discussed global treatment approaches, and described available services for treatment. Six months of research by the Intrepid Behavioral Health Center on base determined a 36% reduction in stigma surrounding seeking services for mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Basetrack was also named Best Theatre of 2014 in The New York Times.
BOSSS
En Garde Arts continued to grow, creating the highly anticipated Emerging Arts Festival BOSSS in the fall of 2015. Beginning in early 2015, Hamburger gathered multiple artists together once a week to brainstorm ideas. Hamburger mentored the artists as pieces began to take shape, working with the Hudson River Park as a performance space.
Completely free to the public, BOSSS programming included Given The Present, The Future Does Not Depend On The Past, The Visitors, Moms, The Queer Garden, We Were Wild Once Episode 6: Talks With A Drunk, Night, Janitor, Carousel, An Evening With Bina48, This Place, Gnomads of the Garden, Long Time, and Ghost Card.
Wilderness
In 2016, En Garde Arts premiered Wilderness at the Abrons Arts Center in New York, NY. This multimedia documentary theatre piece speaks to the search for connection between parents and children in families amongst the complexities that accompany life in the 21st century, including mental health, addiction, and gender and sexual identity. Inspired by co-writer and executive producer Anne Hamburger’s own experiences with her son, this piece compiled real-life interviews, research, and the blending of documentary and fiction to portray the complex journey that parents and children embark in seeking therapy and communication. Wilderness toured across the country, was published by Dramatists Play Service and is now being licensed by colleges and universities around the world. In 2014, Wilderness was named Critics’ Pick in The New York Times.
Red Hills
In 2018, En Garde premiered Red Hills in New York, NY. Red Hills was a site-specific piece exploring the questions of “Who has the right to tell a story?” and “Whose story is it?” through the lens of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Red Hills tells the story of an American missionary named David and a Rwandan tour guide named God’s Blessing who meet as teenagers during the Genocide. Back in the U.S., David writes a book called Dogs of Rwanda that becomes famous but is riddled with lies and omissions. When God’s Blessing happens upon the book 20 years later, this propels David to return to Rwanda, reconnect with God’s Blessing to relive the past and learn the meaning of forgiveness. The production took over a 20,000 square foot empty and raw floor of a downtown office building located at 101 Greenwich Street, transforming it into multiple sites, including an NGO-headquarters, the Kigali airport, Nyamata Genocide Memorial and the red hills of Rwanda. One of the most meaningful responses to the production came from a Genocide survivor who was so moved by the show that she asked if she could bring in a photograph of her own family to add to the altar of remembrance in the set.
En Garde Arts’ Community Engagement Coordinator Heather Cohn, along with Red Hills Community Engagement Facilitator Channie Waites, crafted post-show panel discussions with experts on Rwanda and healing trauma. On June 20, 2018, audiences were treated to a Rwandan dinner prior to a benefit performance and encouraged to talk about their reactions to the play, their thoughts on what stories need to be heard & who should tell them, what communities, groups, and/or perspectives they least understood, and whose stories they wished to open themselves to hearing.

Production history

1985: The Ritual Project This collaboration included writer, Nancy Beckett and composer, Kim Sherman and sculptor, Michael Berkowicz. Directed by Michael Engler, performed by Kate Fugeli as the Girl, and sung by three opera singers
1986: Terminal Bar written by Paul Selig, directed by Michael Engler, starring Fisher Stevens
1987: Naked Chambers written by Dick Beebe, starring Richard Gottlieb
1988: 3 Pieces for a Warehouse by
María Irene Fornés, Anna Cassio and Quincy Long
1989: At the Chelsea including A Quiet Evening with Sid and Nancy starring Penny Arcade and Steven Wastell; The Room with David Van Tieghem and Tina Dudek; Embedded by Ann Carlson; Letters From Dead People by Frank Maya; and John Kelly performing as Joni Mitchell
1989: Plays in the Park, including Bad Penny written by Mac Wellman and directed by Jim Simpson
1989: Krapp's Last Tape starring and directed by Paul Zimet of The Talking Band
1990: Crowbar written by Mac Wellman, directed by Richard Caliban, with music by David Van Tieghem
1990: Father Was a Peculiar Man directed by Reza Abdoh, co-written by Reza Abdoh & Mira-Lani Oglesby
1991: Another Person Is a Foreign Country written by Charles L. Mee, Jr., directed by Anne Bogart
1991: Occasional Grace directed by Bill Rauch
1992: Vanquished by Voodoo written and directed by Laurie Carlos, featuring Carl Hancock Rux and Viola Sheely
1993: Strange Feet written by Mac Wellman, directed by Jim Simpson, music by David Van Tieghem
1993: Orestes adapted by Charles L. Mee, Jr., directed by Tina Landau, starring Jefferson Mays and Theresa McCarthy
1994: Marathon Dancing written by Laura Harrington, directed by Anne Bogart, music by Christopher Drobny, choreography by Alison Shafer
1994: Stonewall: Night Variations directed by Tina Landau
1995: J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation book and lyrics by Jeffrey M. Jones, music by Jonathan Larson, directed by Jean Randich, choreography by Doug Elkins
1996: The Trojan Women: A Love Story written by Charles L. Mee, Jr., directed by Tina Landau, starring Sharon Scruggs
1996: The Waste Land directed by Deborah Warner, starring Fiona Shaw
1997: Sweet Thereisenstradt, based on the diary of Willi Mahler, directed by Damien Gray
1998: Mystery School written by Paul Selig, directed by Doug Hughes, music and sound design by David Van Tieghem, starring Tyne Daly
1998: Secret History of the Lower East Side written by Carlos Murillo, Alice Tuan and Peter Ullian, directed by Matthew Wilder
2014: Basetrack Live, created by Edward Bilous, co-adapted by Jason Grote & Seth Bockley & Anne Hamburger, Directed by Seth Bockley, Music Composed by Michelle DiBucci, Edward Bilous and Greg Kalember.
2016: Wilderness, Written by Seth Bockley & Anne Hamburger, Directed by Seth Bockley, Movement by Devon DeMayo & Patrick McCollum, Music by Kyle Miller & Towr’s, Kyle Henderson & Desert, Noises and Gregory Alan Isakov, Video by Michael Tutaj, Sound by Mikhail Fiksel, Lighting by Scott Bolman.
2018: Red Hills, Written by Asiimwe Deborah Kawe and Sean Christopher Lewis, directed by Katie Pearl; with actors Christopher McLinden and Patrick J. Ssenjovu; composition and live music by Farai Malianga and singer Sifiso Mabena; set design by Adam Rigg; lighting design by Brian Aldous & Adam Macks; costume design by Angela M. Fludd; and dramaturgy by Morgan Jenness.

Awards

: Bad Penny 1990; Bad Penny 1990; En Garde Arts 1991; Orestes 1994; The Trojan Women 1997
Drama Desk Awards : The Waste Land 1997
Outer Critics Circle Awards : Crowbar 1989-90
Edwin Booth Award, 1995