Artists with Works & Process at the Guggenheim Develop New Work on Campus

December 2, 2024

Advancing Potash Hill’s growing reputation as a destination for artist residencies and creative programming of the highest caliber, Works & Process at the Guggenheim will host four creative residencies on campus from February 1-8, 2025. Encompassing theater, opera, poetry, and dance, these strikingly original projects come to Potash Hill through Works & Process’s LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” program. Potash Hill is proud to be Works & Process’s first partner in Vermont, and the newest and largest of the program’s 15 residency partners this season.

Described by The New York Times as “an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process,” Works & Process elevates new works and offers audiences unprecedented access to generations of leading creators and performers. For 40 years, it has championed the creative process from studio to stage. Works & Process amplifies support for performing artists, while simultaneously providing the public with programs that blend performance highlights and discussions with the creators to foster greater understanding and appreciation. 

In a philosophy akin to farm-to-table, W&P’s LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” offers artists fully funded creative residencies with a network of partners spanning Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Following residencies and public presentations on Potash Hill, the four projects will tour nationally and internationally, visiting acclaimed venues and festivals such as the Guggenheim and National Sawdust in New York, the Williamstown Theatre Festival (MA), and the Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland. Learn more about each of these exciting creative projects below, and stay tuned for more information about on-campus performances.

February 2025 LaunchPad Residences on Potash Hill

Custom of the Coast: A collaboration between American composer Kamala Sankaram and Irish poet/librettist Paul Muldoon, this new opera interweaves the life stories of an eighteenth-century Irish pirate who was sentenced to death and an Indian-born, Irish dentist who died in 2012 after being denied an abortion. The music for the opera draws from both traditional Irish and medieval music and Indian classical music to connect these two stories separated by time. Following a weeklong residency on Potash Hill, the opera will have a showing at National Sawdust in New York City in February and will premiere at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland in August.

Never Alone. In their residency, Tony Award-winning director/choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and bestselling author Kate Quinn focus on a co-created piece, Never Alone, which centers around the world of codebreakers and submarine crews during World War II. Bound by the iron confines of wartime secrecy and desperately in love, a British naval officer and a woman with an unmatched gift for breaking codes are destined to fight on distant ends of the same dangerous mission and never know it. Lauded for his choreography of the Broadway production of Hamilton, as well as In the Heights and Bandstand, Blankenbuehler embarks on another historical project alongside historical fiction writer Quinn, author of The Alice Network and The Diamond Eye.

New Work by Jeremy O. Harris. Celebrated writer, producer, and actor Jeremy O. Harris’s new play comes to Potash Hill prior to its world premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Excerpts will be performed as the culmination of a workshop as part of the production’s LaunchPAD residency. Harris was recently announced as the inaugural creative director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Creative Collective.

Lite Feet with Chrybaby Cozie. Advancing this New York City dance tradition, pioneers of Harlem Lite Feet come to campus to create new work that communicates how this vibrant and energetic form of expression has developed and grown. Members of Bomb Squad under the tutelage of Chrybaby Cozie will perform highlights as part of the production’s LaunchPAD residency. A Harlem native, Chrybaby Cozie is one of the founding fathers of the Hip-Hop freestyle genre called Lite Feet, a style of street dance that originated in the early 2000s in New York City and that celebrates urban culture and creativity.

Works & Process is a non-profit performing arts organization without walls. Through collaborations and partnerships, Works & Process aggregates resources to support longitudinal creative process. Its impact is felt further afield as numerous commissions created in LaunchPAD residencies tour nationally and internationally. With a network of residency partners, Works & Process LaunchPAD provides sequenced and made-to-measure residencies with industry-leading fees of $1,050 per artist per week, transportation, health insurance enrollment access, 24/7 studio availability, and on-site housing. These offerings culminate in public sharings with local communities. Learn more at worksandprocess.org/residencies.