Arts and Cultural Programming

Mission Statement

To provide important performing artists the unconditional opportunity to take risks and to create work across multiple disciplines.

To present work by contemporary artists of all fields of the performing arts in the highest professional capacity available.

To integrate fully that work into the academic life of the university in multiple ways to foster learning, participation, and creativity.

To maintain The Alexander Kasser Theater as a state of the performing arts facility and therefore superbly responsive to distinctive artistic impulses.

To maximize the value to the University of having its public arts programming positioned as innovative and daring.

ACP’s overarching premise is to sustain its role as a leader in the advocacy of contemporary artists in this country by producing and presenting their works at Montclair State University, and in doing so to ensure that work of exemplary artists is seen at venues worldwide.

Integral to this mission is the need to encourage audiences to become more adventurous and open to new artistic experiences. Since its inception, the Peak Performances series has set out to challenge and rethink the way independent theaters operate and to create a bold new model for presenters in the Garden state.

ACP is embedded in a public university campus setting and is committed to engaging more than 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Under the ACP umbrella, Peak Performances is a leading model nationally for innovative producing and presenting.

Peak Performances

Under the artistic direction of ACP’s Executive Director, Jedediah Wheeler, PEAK Performances has achieved international recognition for presenting and producing innovative works in dance, music theater and opera. With a celebrated emphasis on interdisciplinary work, PEAK hosted 75 World and American Premiers since 2005. Notable among the artists whose work has been seen on the Alexander Kasser Theater stage are Richard Alston, David Rousseve, Bill T Jones, Camille A. Brown, Wayne MacGregor, Robyn Orlin, Romo Castelucci, Crsytal Pite, Liz Gerring, Faye Driscoll, Angelica Liddell, Jan Fabre, Emma Dante and Pam Tanowitz.

Robert Wilson conceived and directed The Life of Clementine Hunter for the Kasser stage and has also directed Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape with himself in the title role. Writer, director, designer and choreographer David Gordon revived his production of Robert Brustein’s seminal musical, Schlemiel the First.

PEAK commissions work notably Dog Days by David T. Little and Royce Vavrek, Spinning by Maya Beiser, Julia Wolfe and Laurie Olinder,Leonora and Alejandro by Stacy Klein for Double Edge Theater and My Coma Dreams by Fred Hersch. Companies making their American debuts include Gandini Juggling (UK), Via Katlehong (South Africa), Inbal Oshman (Israel), Charlotte Vincent (UK) and Raphaelle Boitel (France).

By bringing together artists of uncommon imagination with diverse audi-ences of adventuresome spirit, PEAK promotes a greater appreciation of human possibility.

Office of Arts + Cultural Programming

Memberships

News

Theater Matters: An Artists and Critics Review Panel
Theater Matters, Jonathan Kalb's live and fiery theater-reviewing program, returns at The Invisible Dog Art Center on Mon., March 18th.

Panelists will include Ben Brantley (Co-Chief Theater Critic, New York Times), Jedediah Wheeler (Executive Director, Peak Performances/Kasser Theater MSU), Elysa Gardner (Theater Critic, New York Stage Review)
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The New York Times: Critic's Notebook: Suspended in Air, Searching for Connection
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do” — it’s almost spooky in its old-timey sweetness, at odds with the spare, forbidding space we see before us. This is the start of the French director-choreographer Raphaëlle Boitel’s stark and stunning “When Angels Fall,”a blend of circus and dance set in a mechanized dystopia whose inhabitants yearn for human connection — a bicycle built for two.
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Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet's Landfall won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. This is the first Grammy Award for Laurie Anderson! Inspired by her experience of Hurricane Sandy,Landfall was commissioned by Peak Performances and was performed by Ms. Anderson and Kronos on the Alexander Kasser stage in 2013. Congratulations to all!!!!