New York Theatre Festivals

Join us for a night of conversations with NYC festival producers and curators. Leading theatre presenters from across the city, representing a variety of festivals, are coming together to discuss how they curate, program design, and produce some of NYC's most renowned performing arts festivals.

Producers and curators include: Jay Stull (Ars Nova), Nic Adams + Nurit Chinn (Exponential Festival), Manuel Moran (International Puppet Fringe Festival), Nicky Paraiso (La MaMa), Sam Hood Adrain (New York City Fringe), John Hoobyar (Prelude Festival 2024), Beth Morrison (Prototype Festival), Meghan Finn - TBC (The Tank), Tommy Kriegsmann (Under the Radar), Elena Siyanko (Down to Earth)

Panel 1 (6:30 pm) – "How Do Festivals Work?"

Panel 2 (7:30 pm) – "How Do I Get My Work Programmed?"

Come find out more about the NYC festival scene. A great opportunity to learn more about an important part of NYC's cultural landscape and to discover paths to having your work presented.

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Learn more about our panelists, below:

Nic Adams (he) is a 2025 NYSCA grant recipient for his play, NECK DOWN. He is an NYC-based educator, cultural organizer, and theatre-maker. MFA in playwriting, Brooklyn College ('23). Since '17, Adams has served as the Producing Director of The Exponential Festival, overseeing its grant-writing, reporting, and fundraising activities, as well as its establishment as a 501(c)(3). FUCKED AND JOLLY, a book of artist interviews from Exponential’s first decade, edited by Adams, was published by 53rd State Press in '24. His short play, Grief Leash, is represented by Tiny Scripted, and his poetry is published online at B O D Y Literature.

Nurit Chinn is a playwright, curator and producer from London, currently based in Brooklyn. She is the Co-Director of Exponential Festival 2026, alongside Bailey Williams. Nurit's plays have been developed at Alliance Theatre, BAM Fisher, The Royal Court Theatre (U.K.), and others. She is the Playwright-in-Residence at Centro Primo Levi, where she is also under commission. Nurit is a 2024/5 New Jewish Culture Fellow, a 2025 Alliance-Kendeda Finalist, and the Next Generation Fellow at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, where she programs international theatre artists and events. MFA: Playwriting, Brooklyn College.

Manuel Antonio Morán Martínez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and has worked as an actor, singer, writer, composer, puppeteer, theater and film director and producer in his country, Latin America, Europe and the United States. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of SEA, Society of the Educational Arts, Inc. (www.teatrosea.org), with offices in Puerto Rico, Florida and New York City. Celebrating its 40 years in 2025, SEA’s objective is to offer a real entertainment alternative, with cultural value and educational quality, for kids, the youth and adults through bilingual educational programs like workshops, seminars, theater and other cultural artistic expressions.

Sam Hood Adrain (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn originally from Providence, Rhode Island. As a theatre artist, Sam has worked on stage and off at companies across the country including MCC Theater, Chickenshed NYC, Infinity Theatre Company, Barrington Stage Company, Dramatist Guild Foundation, FRIGID New York, Missoula Children's Theatre, Ithaca Shakespeare Company, Culture Lab LIC, HERE, IRT, MITU580, The Flea, the cell theatre, Theatre Row, Brooklyn Art Haus, Strongbox Theater, and Audible.com. Sam is a Founding Co-Artistic Director of What Will the Neighbors Say? Theatre Company, the Associate Producer & General Manager for the Vineyard Arts Project, is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Marymount Manhattan College and an Artist-in-Residence at NYU's Espacio de Culturas, and a member of the Board of Directors at A.R.T/New York. He is the recipient of the 2021 BroadwayWorld Award for Best Director of a Regional Production for his direction of  The 39 Steps at Strongbox Theater. He is a published playwright whose works have been called "heartbreaking...complex...and thought-provoking" (Theatre is Easy), have been presented in NYC at HERE, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and IRT Theatre, toured to Providence and Toronto, and produced as a radio play by the Cleveland Radio Players. Recent TV credits include Search Party and Law & Order as well as a print campaign for Santander Bank. Sam currently serves as the Festival Coordinator at FRIGID New York where he runs the New York City Fringe, Queerly, Days of the Dead, Little Shakespeare, and Gotham Storytelling festivals.

John Hoobyar is a performance curator and producer based in New York. He has guest curated and produced programs for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival, The Martin E. Segal Center’s Prelude Festival, the international dance festival Tanz im August, and BAM, where he is currently Manager of Artistic Planning. Outside of producing, John has collaborated with artists and institutions including Movement Research, Heather Kravas, Pentacle, Will Rawls, Goethe-Institut, Moriah Evans, Culturebot, and Sarah Michelson, among others, as a performer, writer, editor, casting director, and finance manager. johnhoobyar.com

A 2024 Grammy-nominated producer, recipient of the 2020 Musical America Award for Artist of the Year/Agent of Change and a Kennedy Center 50NEXT Honoree (2022), Beth Morrison is an opera-theatre producer and the President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects. Morrison is noted as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR). Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers. BMP is celebrated as one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time. BMP commissions, develops, produces and tours the groundbreaking new works of these living composers and their collaborators, which take the form of opera-theatre, music-theatre, and vocal-theatre. Operating across the US and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment, allowing them to create singularly innovative and impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 60 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone (Du Yun/ Royce Vavrek) and p r i s m (Ellen Reid/Roxie Perkins).

Veteran programmer and arts administrator, Elena Siyanko,  serves as Co-Director of DOWN TO EARTH, New York City’s first international festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces. She guides the concept and international programming and oversees strategic partnerships and fundraising for the inaugural 2025 Festival program.  Siyanko is the Inaugural Artistic and Executive Director of PS21 /Center for Contemporary Performance  (2019–2025), where over six seasons she brought more than 100 distinct productions to PS21, featuring artists and companies representing 15 countries. She produced new multidisciplinary projects and performances in public spaces, curated more than 220 events for diverse audiences, established collaborations with regional, national, and international organizations, and hosted over 30 artists’ residencies for projects in visual art, dance, music, contemporary performance, and theater.  A regular attendee of international arts festivals in Europe and Latin America, Siyanko has witnessed the power of creative performance to shape the physical and social character of outdoor spaces. Over the past six years, she has been in the vanguard of curators popularizing international contemporary circus and in-situ multidisciplinary performance through her work at PS21/Center for Contemporary Performance. Through her curation, she has brought large-scale outdoor spectacles developed during residencies and hosted dozens of North American premieres and company debuts from renowned artists and productions. Full bio: https://redosmosis.com/who-we-are/