Mister Cobra, a semi-autobiographical solo theater-music performance by Lucy Liyou, combines free-jazz, korean folk opera, musique-concrète, 2000s era pop, text-to-speech recordings, film, comedy, and drag-inspired performance techniques to confront and dematerialize the boundaries of their transition, and reconsider her transition and personhood as inevitably intertwined with public spectatorship.
Liyou looks at Mister Cobra as a humiliation ritual that confronts and dematerializes the embarrassment one has regarding the traumas that inform the boundaries of one’s transition. It raises questions about the role that desire plays in one’s transition, how abuse can distort motivations to transition, and where transitioning “begins” and “ends” (assuming that these points even exist).
Archives: Shows
In Residence
Leslie Cuyjet, during a season-long residency with Performance Space New York, will further research and develop her project For All Your Life, a performance and social experiment that examines the value of Black life and Black death. Weaving the historical context of life insurance with real current day financial structures, she aims to pay dividends to investors after her passing. At Performance Space New York, Cuyjet will further develop this project, examining ideas of cultural and institutional legibility and how to value a life’s worth, seeding new vehicles of performance.
In collaboration with the 2025 Performa Biennial, Cuyjet will have a consistent presence at the Performa Hub, designed by multi-disciplinary agency, Clocks.
sim-B
sim-B is an laboratory for co-designing liberatory systems of preservation and encryption, stewarded by Black queer memory artists Jazmin Jones, Olivia M Ross, Yeelen Cohen, and Nana XOXO.
sim-B will have a physical presence in the Performance Space New York offices and on occasion, publicly in Open Room, hosting workshops and events, and keeping informal office hours to address our community’s pressing archival questions and needs. In addition, sim-B will advise on Performance Space New York’s burgeoning oral history project that bridges the impactful history of PS122 and the East Village with our current programming and institutional practices.
DARKMATTER
In DARKMATTER, Cherish Menzo and her onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés look for ways to detach their bodies from the way they are perceived and the daily reality in which they move. Among other things, they look up to the sky, at dark matter and at black holes that meet and collide to give birth to a new, (afro)futuristic and enigmatic body. DARKMATTER wants to get rid of the biased way of looking at one’s own body, at that of the other, and at the stories we attribute to them. Together, they throw their bodies into a complex conversation that they want to both enter into and transcend—a duality that feeds the performance.
Just as in her previous project, JEZEBEL, Menzo stretches her movement language further by applying the Chopped and Screwed method to her movement language. A remix technique from hip-hop music in which the tempo is sharply reduced. By stretching the notions of time, the register changes and the performing body manages to generate new readings. DARKMATTER wants to create a thorough reshuffle of our atoms, looking for a new form for—and way of looking at—our body and the complex outside world to which it relates.
Cherish Menzo‘s DARKMATTER is co-presented by Under the Radar.
Alternative Education
Alternative Education is a resource-sharing initiative including multiple workshops, tech camps, fairs, and events designed to uplift and empower artists, technicians, curators, and art workers at various stages of their careers. Spearheaded by Performance Space New York’s Production Manager Sarai Frazier, this series emphasizes community, collaboration, and professional development, with a particular focus on supporting QTBIPOC community. Throughout the season, Performance Space New York will host events, fostering connections and enhancing skills within our community of art workers at the organization and around the city at large.
Throughout September 2025, Performance Space New York will lead and host a series of workshops and resource sharing sessions across Technical Production policies, Tools and Production Skills for Beginners, Artist Storytelling through a Production Lens, Front of House info sessions, resources for production freelancers, and a portfolio review and resource fair in partnership with Queer|Art in May 2026.
Facilitated by Sarai Frazier
Sunday, September 7th , 2025 | 12pm-1pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Participants will learn about their various technical production roles and skills & tools needed in those roles. Participants will also explore the various routes & places that these roles live.
Facilitated by Adrienne Swan
Sunday, September 7th , 2025 | 2pm – 5pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
In this 3 hour workshop, young emerging technicians will learn about the basic tools & skills needed to work as a beginner stagehand in carpentry, lighting, audio & video. Breakfast will be provided.
Facilitated by Barnett Cohen featuring Patricia Margarita Hernández (Associate Curator, Amant), Sheldon Gooch (Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1), Jeff Lee (Partner, Ryan Lee Gallery), Erin Leland (Performer & Writer) & Taja Cheek (Artistic Director, Performance Space New York)
Tuesday, September 9th , 2025 | 2pm – 5pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Codes of Conduct is a workshop for artists and performers led by artist Barnett Cohen about the practice of advocating for your practice. If you experience impostor syndrome, social anxiety at work events, awkwardness in talking about your practice, dread around sending emails/messages, and fear in asking for what you want, this workshop is for you. In Codes of Conduct, we will explore why we experience these uncomfortable emotions and we will overcome them through intimate group discussions, role-playing exercises, writing prompts, and a conversation with established curators, programmers, and gallerists.
Facilitated by Joy Norton & Sika Bonsu
Tuesday, September 9th, 2025 | 7pm-9pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
What’s the teaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
WhaTs tHe TeAaaAAAAAAAAA?
What’s Tea?
Whts???
Gossip. It’s everyone’s guilty pleasure.
An exchange that occurs between two (or more ;)…) people, that can only happen when all parties are consenting and comfortable. Some might argue it’s just as, if not more, intimate than sex. And yet, when did spilling tea with the girls start feeling more taboo than sharing a bed?
In this two-hour experimental workshop, we’ll reclaim gossip as sacred technology: a way to measure how information moves through our bodies, space, and time.
The first hour reimagines the club as a laboratory of somatic play and conversation— shifting it from dancefloor to confessional, from party to portal. We’ll ask ourselves: What does gossip do? How has it served our survival, gathering, and resistance?
In the second hour, we turn our attention to space—from sacred geometry to hostile architecture. How does the shape of a room shape what’s possible between us? How do physical formations open or close our capacity for intimacy, revelation, and release?
You’ll leave this workshop with tools on communal conflict resolution, a lighter heart <3, and a deeper awareness of how information moves through our bodies, communities, and built environments.
Facilitated by X Arriaga Cuellar
Thursday, September 11th , 2025 | 2pm – 5pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Curator and archivist X Arriaga Cuellar shares the importance of preservation and storytelling through the use of archival work.
Facilitated by Angelique Rosales Salgado
Monday, September 15th, 2025 | 7pm-9pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Curator and writer Angelique Rosales Salgado leads a BIPOC CV and Resume Workshop that considers artist Sondra Perry’s “spectral bio” (2:26–10:20), created for the alternative experimental program Dark Study (developed by artists Caitlin Cherry and Nicole Won Hee Maloof), where Perry was a student advisor in 2022. Through this poetic pursuit as a departure point, the workshop explores strategies and resources for shaping a compelling CV / resume document. How do you name your multiplicity? (Kameelah Janan Rasheed) Together we will engage a series of questions, prompts, and exercises that guide how to narrativize your creative experiences, and conclude with individualized feedback on your CV, resume, or cover letter.
Facilitated by David Thomson, Artist Resource Collective (ARC)
Alternative Education x Artist Resource Collective invites participants to learn about financial literacy as artists & freelancers. These workshops are practical and interactive, designed so you leave with completed tasks in hand, clear next steps, and defined goals for the future.
Workshop 1: Banking, Budgeting, Saving & Retirement
Saturday, September 20th, 2025 | 10am-1pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Learn budgeting, banking, and saving strategies that help you build stability and align with your values and creative practice.
Workshop 2: Credit & Debt, Cashflow & Care
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 | 10am-1pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre
Learn to build credit, manage debt, and plan for the future with care at the center, while exploring key life planning documents that align your financial and health decisions with your values.
Facilitated by Kimiko Tanabe
Monday, September 22nd, 2025 | 10am-12pm | Online
Participants will learn about their various front of house roles and skills & tools needed in those roles.
Don Juan (The Anti-Don Juan Play) by Juan Ramirez
Directed by: Keenan Charles
Tuesday, September 30, 2025 | 7pm-9pm | Neilma Sidney Theatre