Andrew Schneider
After his immersive, interactive installation—NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars)—wowed over 600 attendees during The Dark in February, OBIE Award-winning Andrew Schneider returns to PS21 with a world premiere extended reality experience.
Something is happening in the FIELD.
You may have been here before, but you’ve never been now. Presence, coincidence, synchronicity, and the gravity of shared public space – what we notice, what we miss, and what only becomes visible when enough people are paying attention.
Bring headphones, bring your friends, bring everyone you know.
A singular experience of multitudes.
Commonground is PS21’s annual free festival of large-scale contemporary performance and spectacle. A family-friendly celebration of the end of summer, Commonground welcomes the community to PS21 for performances from renowned international artists across the PS21 landscape.
This year’s festival takes place September 4–7, and features the world premiere of SUPERDRUM X, a work featuring 100 self-playing drums by Dutch musical collective Touki Delphine featuring a different local drummer each night. Plus: the world premiere of FIELD, a new PS21-commissioned performance by OBIE award-winning director, writer, and electronics artist Andrew Schneider, that gently removes reality from its normal and turns it inside out. Sayer Mansfield’s DIVE BARN showcase of local artists rounds out the lineup.
Each day, we’ll have field day activities for the family leading up the performances: food trucks, free ice cream, apple picking, lawn games, and more.
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.
Andrew Schneider, Creator and Director / Co-Composer and Co-Sound Designer
Ivey Lowe, Producer
Saúl Ulerio, Stage Manager
Ryan Gamblin, Co-Composer and Co-Sound Designer
Brad Davis, App Development Assistant
Amira Samiy, Line Producer
Annie Saunders, Dramaturgical Consultant
Ayo ohs, Dramaturgical Consultant
Co-commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and PS21
Developed in residency via the Lincoln Center’s Collider Fellowship, Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Foundational forms for this show were developed in association with POINT.A – a collaboration between Annie Saunders and Andrew Schneider
PLAZA and FIELD are powered by Producer Hub
This project is possible thanks to lead support from the GKV Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is provided by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Hudson River Bank & Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Ackerman Foundation, Upstate Theater Coalition for a Fair Game, and Childrens Foundation for Columbia County.
