For the third year, Catskill Art Space and En Garde Arts will collaborate on a performing arts residency in the Catskill Mountains, offering playwright and performing artist Chisa Hutchinson time and space to develop Objects of Decadence, a site-specific commission. The new work examines the fraught history of museum curation and its ties to colonization and extraction, asking urgent questions about ownership, history, and preservation — and is slated for an immersive production at a New York City museum.
About En Garde Arts
Founded by Anne Hamburger in 1985, En Garde Arts pioneered site-specific performance in New York City. For nearly four decades, En Garde has redefined where theater happens, transforming parks, piers, rooftops, office buildings, and unexpected spaces into stages that connect art and audience in deeply visceral ways. Through bold, original productions by visionary artists like Anne Bogart, Tina Landau, Reza Abdoh, and Mac Wellman, En Garde has built a legacy of theatrical innovation that places location at the heart of storytelling.
En Garde Arts produces new work that is site-specific, socially resonant, and driven by a sense of place, creating experiences that immerse audiences in the city around them. Through our developmental programs, Uncommon Voices, The Joan D. Firestone Award and Playdate, we nurture new work with both early career and mid-career artists who are investigating new forms of storytelling. Today, we are developing 5 to 7 new projects every year with change-makers including Samora la Perdida, Irina Kruzhilina, Jared Mezzocchi and others.
About Chisa Hutchinson
Chisa was born in Queens, New York, raised in Newark, New Jersey, and at fourteen received a scholarship that brought her ten miles and a whole world away to Short Hills, where she lived with a host family before going on to earn a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Vassar College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from NYU. Her work has been produced by a wide range of companies including Atlantic Theater Company, Second Stage, Primary Stages, South Coast Rep, National Black Theater, the Alley Theater, New Dramatists, Rattlestick Theater, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, Salt Lake Acting Company, Delaware REP, and many others across the U.S. and UK. She has also worked in television and film as a Staff Writer for Blue Man Group, a writer-performer with the New York NeoFuturists, and a staff writer for cable and streaming series. Her debut feature, The Subject — an indie drama examining the moral fallout when a white documentarian exploits the death of a Black teenager — won over 30 festival prizes and is now available on VOD. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Delaware and is in development on a Chaka Khan biopic, a pan-African heist film, and a new Starz series, Three Women.
Housing for this production is generously donated by:
