Arts + Cultural Programming

Mission Statement
Arts + Cultural Programming | PEAK Performances

  • 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 22,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Under the ACP umbrella, PEAK Performances is a leading model nationally for innovative producing and presenting.

     

    PEAK Performances

    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 has hosted 118 World and American Premieres 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, Romeo Castellucci, Crystal 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 audiences of adventuresome spirit, PEAK promotes a greater appreciation of human possibility.
     

    ARTS + CULTURAL PROGRAMMING
    PEAK PERFORMANCES

    Wiley Hausam
    Director

    Camille Spaccavento
    Marketing & Media Director

    Patrick Flood @ Flood Design
    Graphic Designer | Art Director

    Blake Zidell Associates
    Media Representative
    PEAK Performances

    Martin Halo
    Percy Cole Media
    Website Development

    Abigail Pope
    Marketing and Media Assistant

    COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
    PERFORMANCE OPERATIONS

    Hillery Makatura
    Director

    Andrew Dickerson
    Production Manager

    Colin Van Horn
    Technical Director

    Kevin Johnson
    Senior Production Engineer

    Gene Lotito
    CART Facilities Director

    Robert Hermida
    Audience Services Director

    Jeff Lambert Wingfield
    Box Office Manager

    Laurel Brolly
    Business Administrator

     

    Memberships

     

    theatre communications group opera america logo jersey arts logo international society for performing arts logo intix logo dance nyc logo dance nj logo art pride logo apap logo