I make and facilitate participatory experiences designed to catalyze community and instigate new ways of imagining.
My work is rooted in my background in theatre as a collaborative director, writer, performer, and designer, but is located at the intersection of theatre, games, and mediated experiences.
I also focus on the frameworks that surround and support community-based art as a producer, curator, and administrator for arts organizations. I am a founding artist-in-residence and was a curator and producing director of Cloud City in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from 2012-2014; from 2013 to 2014 I was associate producer of CATCH, the OBIE Award-winning Brooklyn-based performance series. I am the co-founder and Executive Director of The Wild Plan, a national touring theatre initiative created with collaborator Eric Powell Holm. I was an artist-in-residence/administrator/curator at 1419 (RIP) in Minneapolis.
My essays on cultural production and micro-economics have appeared in HowlRound and contactprojectjournal, and my reviews have appeared courtesy of Contemporary Performance. I also occasionally interview other artists (600 Highwaymen here, Ant Hampton here).
I received my graduate degree in Directing from the John Wells Directing Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.
I currently lead the guest experience and operations teams at SPACES, a (soon to emerge from stealth) location-based virtual reality startup.
Get in touch at bengansky[at]gmail[dot]com.