Founded by artists as Performance Space 122 in an abandoned school building at 150 First Avenue in the East Village, New York. Performance Space 122 began in 1980, emerging from a city struggling with high rates of poverty, crime, racial strife, and drugs, as well as the deaths of many vital artists and thinkers in the AIDS epidemic. In our theaters PS122 was able to foster an open and accessible culture of aesthetic risk-taking and social experimentation by providing artists working in performance with a safe space to test their own creativity, express revolutionary ideas, and share artistic practices with adventurous audiences. Challenging and fun, PS122’s Open Movement created a social glue that nurtured many of the choreographers, dancers, performance artists, and anyone inspired enough to join in. The first decades of PS122 also succeeded in connecting audiences to vital provocateurs who catalyzed debates and social change at national and international levels. As decades passed the city became cleaner, safer, greener and more expensive, and the neighborhood gentrified. Although PS122 became an “institution” during this time, we also managed to retain our gritty non-conformist character and engage artists in a dynamic and supportive environment. PS122 continued to invest in ground-breaking artists and build our local, national, and international reputation, all the while navigating the waters of a recession, shifting expectations, and a major capital renovation of our home.
