Why We’re Here

¶ PERFORMANCE BEGINS WITH A QUESTION. NYU Skirball presents work that asks, not answers. We believe in performance as a living inquiry, a space where ideas take shape through bodies, images, sound, and silence. The best work invites us to think again, feel more deeply, and see differently. 

¶ THE THEATER IS A FORUM. We are more than a stage. We are a public space for shared experience where artists, students, scholars, and audiences converge. This is a place for ideas in motion, for performance as conversation. 

¶ ART THRIVES IN UNCERTAINTY. We welcome the unfamiliar. We value complexity over clarity, tension over ease. Some works comfort. Others disturb. Both are welcome. We program with the belief that confusion, when honored, can lead to insight. 

¶ THE AUDIENCE IS ESSENTIAL. At Skirball, the audience is not passive. You are part of the ecology of meaning. We curate performances that demand engagement — intellectual, emotional, and bodily. The experience does not end with applause, but continues in thought and dialogue. 

¶ WE BRIDGE THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL. Rooted in New York City and connected to the world, we bring international artists to our stage and amplify voices that challenge assumptions. Our programming reflects the complexity of our time and the richness of diverse artistic vocabularies. 

¶ TRADITION MEETS EXPERIMENTATION HERE. We program with reverence for the past and curiosity for the future. Our stage holds the ritual and the radical, the classical and the new. At Skirball, these forms are not in conflict; they are in conversation. 

¶ THE BODY IS THE ARCHIVE. What remains after a performance is not only the recording or review, it is the gesture remembered, the stillness felt, the word carried home. The archive lives in the audience. We honor the body as a vessel of memory. 

¶ CURATING IS A FORM OF TEACHING. As a university center, we understand curation as pedagogy. Each season is a syllabus. Each performance a prompt. Our work is in dialogue with NYU’s intellectual life and with the larger questions of our world. 

¶ HOSPITALITY IS INTELLECTUAL AND HUMAN. We welcome works that speak many languages artistically, culturally, and literally. Our role is to host with care: to prepare the space, to hold the encounter, and to trust the audience’s capacity to meet the work fully. 

¶ ART IS ALWAYS BECOMING. Every performance is a rehearsal for something more: an idea, a change, a reckoning. At NYU Skirball, we’re here not to conclude but to begin. The curtain does not close on answers, but on invitations.