600 HIGHWAYMEN
FIVE YEARS
In 2019, interdisciplinary theater company 600 HIGHWAYMEN—Guggenheim Fellows Michael Silverstone and Abigail Browde, described by Le Monde as “standard-bearers of contemporary theater-making”—began a visual record of life in rural New York. Each of their works takes a different form; here, it unfolds as a sustained field of moving images.
A PS21 commission, FIVE YEARS is a multi-channel performance installation built from thousands of short clips, gathered over the course of five years, in close proximity to daily life.
The footage moves between diary and observation—sunlight across a table, hands in the dirt, snow underfoot, conversations in parking lots, a taxidermy auction, a neighbor’s bonfire, a parade passing through town, music from an open window. Shown side by side at large scale, meaning builds through accumulation and adjacency. A child is born. Seasons turn. Routines take shape.
At the same time, other things come into view: protests, political action, pandemic conditions. They sit alongside everything else––the domestic and the public, what is seen close at hand and what unfolds beyond it.
FIVE YEARS holds to this accumulation, as more enters the frame: a portrait of time in an ever-fluctuating now.
600 HIGHWAYMEN (Abigail Browde & Michael Silverstone) have created original performances since 2009. Their work sits at the intersection of theater, dance, and civic encounter, often reducing performance to its most basic elements: people, space, and shared attention. They have been described as “quietly shaking up American theatre since 2009” by The Guardian and “one of New York’s best nontraditional theater companies” by The New Yorker.
600 HIGHWAYMEN (Abigail Browde & Michael Silverstone) have created original performances since 2009. Their work sits at the intersection of theater, dance, and civic encounter, often reducing performance to its most basic elements: people, space, and shared attention. They have been described as “quietly shaking up American theatre since 2009” by The Guardian and “one of New York’s best nontraditional theater companies” by The New Yorker.
Their work has toured widely across the U.S. and internationally, with presentations at Bristol Old Vic, Centre Pompidou, Dublin Theatre Festival, Onassis Cultural Centre, Salzburg Festival, Singapore International Festival of Arts, The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, Volkstheater Wien, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, American Repertory Theater, The Public Theater, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Walker Arts Center, and others.
Their work has been translated into seven languages and received an Obie Award, Switzerland’s ZKB Patronage Prize, and nominations for the Bessie Awards, Drama League Awards, and the Nestroy Prize. Browde and Silverstone are Guggenheim Fellows and alumni of the Rauschenberg Residency. They are Associate Artists with IN SITU and were named to Fast Company’s list of Most Creative People.
Outside of their collaboration, Browde is an Artistic Advisor at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Silverstone has led theater programs in New York State correctional facilities. Together and independently, they have taught at NYU Tisch, Stanford University, Colorado College, and other institutions.
