Commonground is PS21’s annual free festival of contemporary spectacle, where renowned international artists explore the boundaries of what’s physically possible in surprising and participatory performances across PS21’s grounds. Commonground is a family-friendly celebration of the end of summer, welcoming the whole community to PS21 to be dazzled by the performing arts.

This year’s festival features the world premiere of SUPERDRUM X, a work featuring 100 self-playing drums by Dutch musical collective Touki Delphine. Plus: the world premiere of FIELD, a new performance by OBIE award-winning director, writer, and electronics artist Andrew Schneider, Sayer Mansfield’s DIVE BARN, and more.

Space for each performance is limited, so please register in advance. Join us!

SCHEDULE

Friday, September 4

4:30 pm: Andrew Schneider, FIELD

7:30 pm: Touki Delphine, SUPERDRUM X

Saturday, September 5

4:30 pm: Andrew Schneider, FIELD

7:30 pm: Touki Delphine, SUPERDRUM X

Sunday, September 6

3:30 pm: DIVE BARN

4:30 pm: Andrew Schneider, FIELD

7:30 pm: Touki Delphine, SUPERDRUM X

Monday, September 7

7:30 pm: Touki Delphine, SUPERDRUM X

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Andrew Schneider is mostly interested in how humans telling stories about ourselves to each other can make us better at being humans. And how much the second law of thermodynamics and grief have in common. 

He is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk-nominated director, performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, dance, sound, video, installation and public art since 2003.

Andrew’s work uses new and old, high and low tech – from Wave Field Synthesis arrays and Volumetric Lighting displays – to literal smoke and mirrors. He is interested in the edges of human perception, using science as a blueprint for staging, and above all, the question of – how does it make you feel?

Original works include HERE (2025 – Jacob’s Pillow) NOWISWHENWEARE (2022 – Brooklyn Academy of Music and ongoing tour); »remains« (2020 – Radialsystem, Berlin) commissioned by the Sasha Waltz & Guests Dance company; NERVOUS/SYSTEM (2018 – BAM Next Wave); AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar, The Public Theater); YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award, 2016 Drama Desk nom); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Roulette); TIDAL (2013 – River to River); and WOW+FLUTTER (2010 – The Chocolate Factory Theater), among others. 

Andrew is/was a member of the ‘25/’26 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Digital Future’s cohort at Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center’s Collider cohort, the Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab inaugural cohort, the arts incubator ONX, was a Sundance “Art of the Practice” fellow, and has received a fellowship from the Junge Akademie / Akademie Der Künste in Berlin. He teaches a recurring class on original-flavor reality at the Interactive Telecommunications Program and mentors for Theater Mitu’s Hybrid Arts Lab. Wooster Group company member 2007-14. More at www.andrewjs.com.

Amsterdam-based Touki Delphine (Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest, Chris Doyle and John van Oostrum) is a boundary-pushing collective of musicians, performers, and visual artists making waves nationally and internationally with their monumental light and sound installations made from recycled materials. Their work creates poetic encounters between humans and machines. Inspired by natural phenomena, the climate crisis and the idea of nature as a living whole, they explore how technology can not only alienate but also connect.

Touki Delphine is known for transforming discarded materials into powerful musical installations. In FIREBIRD, a unique orchestra of over 600 recycled taillights unleashes a hypnotic choreography of light and sound, transforming Stravinsky’s classic Firebird Suite into an otherworldly experience. In RELAY, 1848 turn signal relay motors create rhythm and harmony. In MACHINE, a second hand plant-potting machine is transformed into the drummer of an ensemble. For TRANSMISSION, miles of scrapped wiring and pneumatic tubing mimic an underground fungal network that hums and vibrates electrically. And DRIFTING, the breakout hit of the 2025 Dutch festival summer, is a new ecosystem built from nothing but waste: ethernet cables from thrift shops, windshield washer fluid reservoirs and their pump motors from junkyards, and salvaged speaker cables from Touki’s own studio. The piece comes alive in live sessions, where musicians engage in dialogue with the installation.

Builders: Nao Nagai, Seth Honnor, Irene Urrutia, Jay Kerry

Kaleider shares space with other creative organizations, individuals, and collaborators.

They tour to cities, festivals, venues and public spaces all over the world.

Sayer Mansfield is a dancer, performer, and choreographer based between the Hudson Valley and New York City. She spent over a decade touring the world with Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Montreal) and Pilobolus Dance Theater (NYC) and has since danced with The Metropolitan Opera, as a guest artist with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and in ongoing collaboration with Movement Museum/Marla Phelan. Her screen work includes appearances in Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig), Maestro (dir. Bradley Cooper), and Sproutland (dir. Cynthia Wade). A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Trinity Laban (UK), and the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, her choreographic work has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow, PS21 Chatham, La MaMa, WSA Studios, and Art Cake NY. She has served as faculty at Jacob’s Pillow, Harvard, Yale, and Phillips Academy Andover, and brought her classes, workshops, and retreats to movement spaces across LA, Montreal, NYC, and the Hudson Valley. She is the creator of Tuesday Night Dance, the celebrated movement class hosted in collaboration with PS21 Chatham. Sayer is also the founder and creator of INNERSTANDING, a movement practice, language and online platform for embodied living and brighter being.

OUR SPONSORS

COMMONGROUND is made possible by our lead sponsor, the GKV Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts; Upstate Theater Coalition for Fair Game; Children’s Foundation of Columbia County; The Ackerman Foundation; Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation; and by the rest of our generous sponsors.