31st Anniversary Gala
Transcend the Ordinary. Enter the Extraordinary.
This year, we invite you to journey between earth and stars, between creative impulse and artistic revelation.
Join us for an evening that transforms our historic space into a stellar landscape, where experimental performance meets cosmic wonder. Together, we’ll venture beyond conventional limits, beyond traditional forms, beyond expectations of what has been—into a future where art knows no bounds.
Honoring Those Who Push BEYOND
🏆 HEREmanitarian Award
✨ Stephanie Ybarra – Artist, Culture Worker, Program Officer of the Mellon Foundation
🏆 Avant Guardian Award
✨ Eisa Davis – Composer (The Warriors), Playwright (Bulrusher), Performer (Passing Strange)
BEYOND is our promise to the future of performance.
Mingle with visionary artists while enjoying interstellar craft cocktails. Experience surprise performances that defy categorization. Witness the unexpected in a space where creative boundaries transcend gravity.
Hosted by:
© Maria Baranova 2024
(l-r: Lauren Miller, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, Jesse Cameron Alick)
HERE’s Co-Directors
FEATURED PERFORMANCES
To be announced
HERE’S ANNUAL GALA
Monday, May 12
HERE’s Arts Center (145 Sixth Avenue)
6:00PM – 11:00PM
Cocktails, Food and Performances starting at 6PM
Artist After Party starting at 9PM
For VIP packages, corporate sponsorships, or more information, contact development@here.org.
ABOUT THE HONOREES
Stephanie Ybarra is a program officer specializing in the performing arts for the Mellon’s Arts and Culture team. Before her role at the Mellon Foundation, Ybarra was the Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage, where she advanced the theater’s role as a local civic partner and national thought leader. Prior to her tenure in Baltimore, Ybarra served as the Director of Special Artistic Programs for The Public Theater where she helmed the Mobile Unit and Public Forum programs, as well as Producing Director for The Playwrights Realm. Additional credits include Yale Repertory Theater, Dallas Theater Center and Dallas Children’s Theater.
Throughout her thirty years of experience on stage and off, Ybarra has emerged as a leading voice in advocating for justice-centered practices within the American Theatre community. She is on faculty at The Juilliard School and serves on the boards of Citizen University and Make Believe Association; Ybarra is a proud member of the artistic Council for the People’s Theatre Project and a former resident dramaturg for The Sol Project. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from Baylor University.
Eisa Davis is an award-winning performer, writer, musician and composer working in multiple aesthetics on stage and screen. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher, and wrote and starred in the stage memoir Angela’s Mixtape, named a best of the year by the New Yorker. Of her thirteen full-length stage works, recent highlights include The Essentialisn’t (Creative Capital Award), Ramp (Ruby Prize winner), and Mushroom (Barrymore nomination). Notable collaborations include AFROFEMONONOMY (PSNY / En Garde Arts / New Georges), Trade Practices (Here), Grace Notes with Carrie Mae Weems, and songs for the musical adaptation of Walter Mosley’s Devil In A Blue Dress. As a singer-songwriter, Davis has been a frequent performer at New York venues like Joe’s Pub, BAM, Symphony Space, the Whitney Museum, and Rockwood. Her albums are Something Else, Tinctures (with Daniel T. Denver), and WARRIORS (with Lin-Manuel Miranda).
Davis wrote for both seasons of Spike Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, and produced and wrote for the FX series Justified: City Primeval. She is known for her screen roles on The Madness, Mare of Easttown, Kindred, The Wire, House of Cards, The Looming Tower, Hart of Dixie, and the upcoming Relay. She also appears in the new release Ex-Husbands opposite Griffin Dunne. As a theatre actor, she has earned an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance, an AUDELCO, three Lucille Lortel nominations, and a Drama League nomination. Work includes The Secret Life of Bees, Kings, Preludes, This, The Call, Julius Caesar (Delacorte, 2017), Jack (Here), and Passing Strange.
Other awards include the USA Artist Fellowship, the Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, a playwright residency at New Dramatists, the Helen Merrill Award, the inaugural Daryl Roth-Paula Vogel new play commission at the Vineyard, and a multiyear fellowship with Black poetry organization Cave Canem. Davis is a Bay Area native and lives in Brooklyn, NY.