A Meal

Due to the interactive nature of A Meal, all patrons and performers must show proof of a negative COVID test.

Free COVID tests will be available at the venue. Please arrive 25 minutes prior to show time if you plan to test at HERE.

In an intimate setting, a small group of attendees share in a communal journey traced by food. Part art installation, part ritual, part laboratory, part meal, and part conversation, this poem for the senses creates space for friends and strangers to eat together, while reflecting on our post-industrial relationship with food. With the state of divisiveness and partisanship that’s rampant in the US at the moment, “A Meal” opens a space to create new relationships while questioning through art the structures and environmental challenges of food in the anthropocene.  

This year’s encounter will take place on HERE’s main stage and is dedicated to NYC Street Vendors. The performances will catalyze two different conversations: On 7/22 we will talk about Food Autonomy:  Reflections on Production, Distribution, Preparation, Consumption, and Power, and on 7/23 we will discuss Policy and NYC Street Food Vendors: Criminalization of Labor of Historically Excluded Workers.

The team for this year’s work-in-progress includes:  LEIMAY Artistic Co Directors Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya, LEIMAY Ensemble members and guests:  Masanori Asahara*, Nixon Beltran, Krystel Copper*, Paige Cowen, Jeremy Goren, Melani DeGuzman, Thea Little, Brandon Perdomo, Drew Sensue-Weinstein, Yolanda Tianyi-Shao, Jeremy Slater, and Community Members and Activists Mohamed Attia (Street Vendor Project), Kelebohile Nkhereanye, Julie Torres Moskovitz, Jason Trachtenburg (4th Street Food Co-op), and others to be announced.

*Core Ensemble Member

A MEAL is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Until further notice, all patrons attending HERE performances and events will be required to wear masks (KN95 or KF94 masks are strongly recommended). 

Proof of vaccination is no longer required.

We ask all audience members to please stay home if they have a sore throat, are feeling sick in any other way, or have been recently exposed to COVID-19, and to please contact the box office for refunds or exchanges.

All of our performers, technicians, and staff members are required to be fully vaccinated and masked unless they are onstage performing. Additionally, they are participating in an active testing regimen to keep everyone as safe as possible.

HERE reserves the right to revise protocols as the rate of transmission changes and in light of new scientific data that may present itself.