HERE Arts Center has filled in its 2026–27 season with four new bookings, from an AI-surveillance music-theater thriller in January to its spring puppet festival in April, and has kept Arias with a Twist on through December 20.
Arias with a Twist: now through December 20
Arias with a Twist, the puppet-cabaret by Joey Arias and Basil Twist, stays in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre for seven more weeks. The Tandem Otter Productions revival, presented in association with HERE, had been booked through November 1; the schedule now runs to a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, December 20.
Looking At You: January 15–23
The immersive techno-noir piece by composer Kamala Sankaram and writer Rob Handel returns to HERE, where it premiered in 2019, with new interactive technology. Kristin Marting, who developed it with them, directs. The audience sits at tables with touchscreens inside a tech company, Rix, that runs global surveillance by AI, while its chief software engineer weighs whether to help her whistleblower ex upload his mind to the cloud.
Looking At You is a FlyRail Studios production in association with Experiments in Opera, hosted by HERE. It plays eight performances and runs 90 minutes. Seats are $35, or $70 at the front tables as a pay-it-forward ticket, and a drink comes with every seat; HERE’s 10 for $10 scheme also applies.
The Black Monk: January 28–February 14
Director Egor Trukhin brings his new stage version of Chekhov’s short story The Black Monk. Its philosopher hero, Andrei Kovrin, meets seven versions of himself, and the happiness they first bring him turns ruinous once each insists he is the real one. Opening night is January 29. Trukhin, trained at GITIS in Moscow, has staged work in 17 countries and last January brought a workshop of Six Characters to La MaMa with Trukhin Ark, the New York company he founded in 2025.
SEE/UNSEE: March 4–21
A HERE production, SEE/UNSEE is a concert of songs and stories by Lila Blue, who performs it with an eight-piece band. Blue’s subject is the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, and the places where their own life meets hers: queerness, love and grief. Jillian Jetton directs and developed the piece. Previews begin March 4, opening night is March 10, and the run ends March 21.
Puppetopia 2027: April 7–18
HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program brings back its spring festival, Puppetopia, with three shows and a pass that bundles them at a discount. Tau Bennett’s Medicine Men (April 7–11) stages a chaotic radio broadcast by a three-piece creature band. Ash Winkfield’s Water Walker uses shadow, tabletop and rod puppets to tell of the Igbo Landing of 1803. Kalan Sherard and Ron Shalom’s The Epic of Gilgamesh (April 14–18) is a puppet opera on the oldest story on record. The Jim Henson Foundation supports the festival.
All five are at HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue, and tickets are on sale now.
