UNSCRIPTED: LIVE AT THE ARMORY
Making Space at the Armory
June 6, 2026
A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR
The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish was the first American verse play for radio and was broadcast live from the Armory in 1937, featuring a then little-known Orson Welles. Inspired by the premiere of this new art form, this afternoon gathers podcasters to record episodes for their series before an Armory audience. Topics range from science in the age of mass credulity, finding the humor in grief, and whether art can be “useful.” Participants include returning host Randy Cohen (Person, Place, Thing), Ramzi Fawaz (Nerd From the Future), and Dr. Karen Tongson and Dr. Megan Auster-Rosen (The Art of Grief). Guests include science scholar and policy maker Alondra Nelson, actor and comedian Kate Berlant, and artist Tania Bruguera. The day concludes with dramatist and Whitney Biennale artist Nile Harris’ reimagining of The Fall of the City, revisiting a play that posed crucial questions about the rise of authoritarianism in an age of mass culture. Today, as podcasters are credited with tipping elections, spreading disinformation, but also regenerating democratic access to public opinion, Unscripted: Live from the Armory invites you the audience to be in the room where it happens. The parallels between 1937 and today are striking. Just as radio once promised both democratic uplift and demagogic peril, the podcast has emerged as our era’s most intimate and unruly medium—a space where expertise, conversation, and performance blur into new civic forms. MacLeish understood that a new technology of voice could rehearse, and perhaps even forestall, the political catastrophes it might also enable. Nearly a century later, that wager feels newly urgent. By bringing podcasters into live conversation with their guests and a present audience, Unscripted reanimates the Armory’s role as a civic stage where emergent media meet the questions that most press upon the public.
– Tavia Nyong’o, Curator of Public Programming and Scholar-in-Residence at Park Avenue Armory
Making Space at the Armory is made possible with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF).
Bloomberg Philanthropies is Park Avenue Armory’s 2026 Season Sponsor. Leadership support for the Armory’s artistic programming has been generously provided by the Anita K. Hersh Philanthropic Fund, Charina Endowment Fund, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, Pinkerton Foundation, the Starr Foundation, the Thompson Family Foundation, and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Major support was also provided by the the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Shubert Foundation, the SHS Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, and Wescustogo Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Julie Menin.
SCHEDULE
saturday, june 6, 2026 from 3pm to 8pm
board of officers room
PERSON, PLACE, THING
3:00PM – 4:00PM
Featuring host Randy Cohen, guest Alondra Nelson, and musical artist Hubby Jenkins
THE ART OF GRIEF
4:15PM – 5:15PM
Featuring co-hosts Dr. Karen Tongson and Dr. Megan Auster-Rosen with guest Kate Berlant
NERD FROM THE FUTURE
5:30PM – 6:30PM
Featuring host Ramzi Fawaz with guest Tania Bruguera
THE FALL OF THE CITY BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
6:45PM – 8:00PM
Directed by Nile Harris
Sound Design by GENG PTP
Cast includes Crackhead Barney, Jess Barbagallo, mayfield brooks, Jim Fletcher, Nile Harris, Tony Jenkins, and Joel Watson
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
MEGAN AUSTER-ROSEN
Dr. Megan Auster-Rosen is a writer, performer and clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and grief. Her work has included writing asylum reports for international torture survivors, inpatient therapy for psychosis, and working with family survivors of suicide. She holds a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch and has co-produced multiple theater projects with refugee populations. For seven years she served as Associate Medical Director of Mental Health at Cedars Sinai and has now transitioned into private practice. She co-hosts the podcast The Art of Grief and is writing a memoir about grief, psychology and magic.
KATE BERLANT
Kate Berlant is an Emmy nominated comedian, actress and writer. Most recently, she was praised for her emotional and captivating surprise cameo in The Bear. Berlant’s one-woman play KATE was a breakout success in both New York and Los Angeles, where it played to sold out crowds. She has created and appeared in her own comedy special Cinnamon in the Wind, directed by Bo Burnham, and sketch comedy special Would It Kill You to Laugh? (A24/Peacock ) with frequent collaborator John Early. Film credits include Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. TV credits: A League of Their Own, Transparent (Amazon); Nobody Wants This, Easy, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, The Characters (Netflix); Search Party (TBS/HBO) . She was named a Just for Laughs “New Face of Comedy” and a Variety “Ten to Watch.” Upcoming, she can be seen in Maddie’s Secret, Babies, and The Breadwinner
TANIA BRUGUERA
Tania Bruguera (Cuban, b. 1968) is an internationally renowned artist and activist. Her art pushes boundaries by exploring how art can intersect with everyday political realities, especially in autocratic regimes, aiming to empower individuals to become active citizens rather than passive spectators. Bruguera introduced groundbreaking concepts like Arte Útil, Political Timing-Specific Art, Art For The Not Yet, and Est-ética. One of her long-term projects, Immigrant Movement International, was based in New York from 2011 to 2015. Tania Bruguera’s multifaceted contributions to the intersection of art and activism have left an indelible mark on the global cultural landscape. Awards include the Prix de Rome of the American Academy, Velázquez Prize, Robert Rauschenberg Award, and Herb Alpert Award, among others. Her work has been showcased at the Tate Turbine Hall, Documenta, and the Venice Biennale. She had solo projects at MoMA, Queens Museum of Art, Centre d’Art Pompidou, and Hamburger Bahnhof Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, among others. She received honorary doctorates from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
RANDY COHEN
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for Late Night with David Letterman, for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s TV Nation. He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the The New York Times Magazine. Currently he is the host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.
RAMZI FAWAZ
Ramzi Fawaz is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and host of the podcast Nerd from the Future. He is the authors of two books, including The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016) and Queer Forms (2022), both published by NYU Press. He currently serves as a contributing editor to Film Quarterly, where he authors the column “Imagination Unbound.” He is currently completing a new book titled Coexisting: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World, which explores how psychedelic experience might provide effective tools for the making of a less xenophobic society.
GENG PTP
GENG PTP is a Manhattan-born, Queens-based sound practitioner (producer/poet/vocalist, sound engineer, DJ), educator, archivist, writer, visual designer, organizer, and physical trainer. With over three decades of participatory roots in New York City’s underground music/ DIY communities, he has been making work through a multitude of solo and collaborative processes. GENG’s organizing and coalition work expands to the visionary collective and label, PTP.
NILE HARRIS
Nile Harris is a performer and director of live art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.
HUBBY JENKINS
Hubby Jenkins is a talented multi-instrumentalist who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn he delved into his southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through America’s traditional music forms. As an integral member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and later Rhiannon Giddens band, Jenkins has performed at festivals and venues around the world, earning himself both Grammy and Americana award nominations. Today he spreads his knowledge and love of old-time American music through his dynamic solo performances and engaging workshops.
ALONDRA NELSON
Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, illuminates the hidden infrastructure of our digital age. As architect of the White House “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” and author of groundbreaking books including The Social Life of DNA, Body and Soul, and Auditing AI, she reveals how technology reshapes our understanding of identity, justice, and society. Nelson asks the essential questions: Who benefits when we allow algorithms to decide our fate? How do we ensure democracy thrives in an AI-mediated world? Named to TIME Magazine’s inaugural list of most influential people in AI, and recognized by Nature as a global leader shaping science, she challenges us to imagine futures where technology expands human possibility—futures rooted in equity and collective wellbeing.
KAREN TONGSON
Dr. Karen Tongson is the author of several books, most recently Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV that Soothes Us (2023). She is the Barbra Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies, and Professor of English, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and American Studies & Ethnicity at University of Southern California, where she also directs the Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture. Her writing and cultural commentary have appeared in Slate, NPR, Eater, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly, among other venues. She co-hosts the podcasts The Gaymazing Race and The Art of Grief
PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Aliyah Curry Stage Manager
Digital Island Studios Recording Engineer
Susan Packard Co-Producer, Person Place Thing
Sam Glover Administrative Coordinator, Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture at USC Dornsife College of Arts, Letters and Sciences
Brianna Trivino Public Programming Intern
SPECIAL THANKS
Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture at Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, University of Southern California
ABOUT PUBLIC PROGRAMMING AT THE ARMORY
Park Avenue Armory’s Public Programming series brings diverse artists and cultural thought-leaders together for discussion and performance around the important issues of our time viewed through an artistic lens. Launched in 2017, the series encompasses a variety of programs including large-scale community events; multi-day symposia; intimate salons featuring performances, panels, and discussions; Artist Talks in relation to the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall programming; and other creative interventions.
Highlights from the Public Programming series include: Carrie Mae Weems’ 2017 event The Shape of Things and 2021 convening and concert series Land of Broken Dreams; a daylong Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the first congregation of Lenape Elders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; “A New Vision for Justice in America” conversation series in collaboration with Common Justice, exploring new coalitions, insights, and ways of understanding question of justice and injustice; Culture in a Changing America Symposia exploring the role of art, creativity, and imagination in the social and political issues in American society today; the 2019 Black Artists Retreat hosted by Theaster Gates; 100 Years | 100 Women, a multiorganization commissioning project that invited 100 women artists and cultural creators to respond to women’s suffrage; a Queer Hip Hop Cypher, delving into the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop with Krudxs Cubensi and author and scholar Dr. Shante Paradigm Smalls; the Archer Aymes Retrospective, exploring the legacy of emancipation through an immersive art installation curated by Carl Hancock Rux and featuring a concert performance by mezzo soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Aaron Diehl; legendary artist Nao Bustamante’s BLOOM; Art at Water’s Edge, a symposium inspired by the work of director and scholar May Joseph on artistic invention in the face of climate change; Symposium: Sound & Color – The Future of Race in Design, an interdisciplinary forum exploring how race matters in creative design for live performance; Juke Joint, a two-day event spotlighting the history of the juke joint in Black American social history and its legacy in music and culture, including performances by Pamela Sneed and Stew; Hapo Na Zamani, a 1960s-style happening curated by Carl Hancock Rux with music direction by Vernon Reid in collaboration with Harlem Stage; Hidden Conversations, a celebration of Dr. Barbara Ann Teer with National Black Theatre; Corpus Delicti in collaboration with the NYC Trans Oral History Project; Guttural (Conducted Contact), a musical encapsulation of the African diaspora by multidisciplinary artist Richard Kennedy, closing The Radical Practice of Black Curation symposium with Princeton University; Antagonisms: A Gathering, a symposium investigating group dynamics led by playwright and essayist Claudia Rankine, renowned postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha, and acclaimed cultural historian Saidiya Hartman, and opened by Guggenheim fellow and choreographer Shamel Pitts’ [Essence of] TOUCH OF RED; Dorian Wood’s Canto de Todes / Song for All, a 12-hour durational chamber and electronic composition and installation mixing a genre-defying canon of folk, pop, and experimental music of Central and Latin America; the largest installation in North America of Yoko Ono’s ongoing project Wish Tree, accompanied by a two-day symposium A Dream You Dream Together exploring Ono’s legacy and tribute concerts featuring experimental electronic music duo Matmos and soprano Alicia Mall Moran with Carl Hancock Rux; and Lenapehoking, an evening of music with Brent Michael Davids including the world premiere of his work “Ode to Joe.”
Notable Public Programming salons include: the Literature Salon hosted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose participants included Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Jeremy O. Harris; a Spoken Word Salon co-hosted with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; a Film Salon featuring the works of immersive artist and film director Lynette Wallworth; “Museum as Sanctuary” led by installation artist and Artist-in-Residence Tania Bruguera, curated by Sonia Guiñansaca and CultureStrike, and featuring undocu-artists Julio Salgado and Emulsify; a Dance Salon presented in partnership with Dance Theater of Harlem, including New York City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan and choreographer Francesca Harper, among others; Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation led by visionary artist Rashaad Newsome; Seasons of Dance, a contemporary dance salon featuring conversations with “mother of contemporary African dance” Germaine Acogny, Tanztheater Wuppertal dancer Malou Airaudo, and dancers from The Rite of Spring / common ground[s] at the Armory; Day for Night: A Salon on Art and Nightlife, an afternoon salon bringing together scholars, writers, artists, and nightlife makers to enlighten nightlife as an art form, and discover the ways social and performative dance have intertwined in recent years, presented in conjunction with R.O.S.E; Black Theater Advance with National Black Theatre; and Caftan – Style as Liberation and Cultural Exchange, exploring the legacy of André Leon Talley.
Artist Talks have featured esteemed artists, scholars, and thought leaders, such as: actor Bobby Cannavale; architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Elizabeth Diller; artist and composer Heiner Goebbels; choreographers Kyle Abraham, Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, Trajal Harrell, Bill T. Jones, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, and Justin Peck; comedian Morgan Bassichis; composers Seth. A. Cluett, Alexandra Gardner, Georg Friedrich Haas, Philip Miller, Samy Moussa, Thuthuka Sibisi, Tyshawn Sorey, and Philip Venables; composer and director Michel van der Aa; composer, vocalist, and scholar Gelsey Bell; conductors Amandine Beyer and Matthias Pintscher; curator Ana Janevski; designer Peter Nigrini; directors Claus Guth, Robert Icke, Richard Jones, Sam Mendez, Satoshi Miyagi, Ariane Mnouchkine, Ben Powers, Peter Sellars, Yuval Sharon, Simon Stone, Ian Strasfogel, Ivo van Hove, and Alexander Zeldin; illustrator Ned Asta; Juilliard president Damian Woetzel and Juilliard Provost and Dean Ara Guzelimian; musicians Helmut Deutsch, Nona Hendryx, Meredith Monk, Kathinka Pasveer, Miah Persson, and Davóne Tines; New Yorker editor David Remnick; James Nicola, Artistic Director of New York Theater Workshop; performance artists Marina Abramović and Helga Davis; RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Chief Curator of Performa; playwrights Ted Huffman, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Tony Kushner, Lynn Nottage, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Anne Washburn; Dr. Augustus Casely Hayford, Director of the Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art; visual artists Nick Cave, Anne Imhof, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Julian Rosefeldt, Hito Steyerl, and Ai Wei Wei; and writers and scholars Anne Bogart, Robert M. Dowling, Joseph Drew, Emily Greenwood, Ebony L. Haynes, Hua Hsu, and Carol Martin.
ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY
Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.
The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture Series that features presentations by scholars and
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
writers on topics related to the Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices.
The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals.
The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.