Prelude, En Garde Arts Turns 40 With Three Free Nights Outside BAM

A plaza on Ashland Place turns into a stage tomorrow night, and the price of admission is showing up.

*Prelude* runs Tuesday, October 13, through Thursday, October 15, with each performance at 7:30 p.m., according to BAM's listing for the show. It is free. It happens outdoors, on the plaza at 300 Ashland Place in Fort Greene, right outside BAM's front door.

It is also the opening act of a birthday. TheaterMania reports that *Prelude* kicks off the 40th anniversary season of En Garde Arts, a company known for site-specific theater.

Four Names on the Plaza

The writer is Charles L. Mee. The director is Anne Bogart, who also adapted the piece. The original songs come from the Lazours, and the costume constructions from Machine Dazzle.

BAM bills it as a large-scale outdoor performance and lists it as part of Next Wave 2026.

The subject is small and enormous at once. BAM says *Prelude* is built from fleeting encounters and moments of connection, the kind that show what it means to be alive, and in love, in New York City.

That is a lot to ask of a plaza. It is also a very Mee idea. The city supplies the strangers.

A Reunion With Some Brooklyn History

Bogart and Mee have done this before. BAM notes that Bogart directed Mee's *bobrauschenbergamerica* there in 2003 and his *Hotel Cassiopeia* in 2007. She came back in 2022 to direct *The Medium*.

*Prelude* is billed as another chapter in that partnership. This time the house is the open air.

The Company That Treats the City as a Stage

En Garde Arts has spent four decades off the usual stages. BAM says the company has spent forty years turning New York's streets, barges and hidden corners into places for theater.

Anne Hamburger, the company's executive artistic director, puts the mission in one line on the En Garde Arts website.

Together with artists, we imagine theatre that has never been done in places where it has never happened.

It reads like a mission statement. It also reads like a map of the city after dark.

The anniversary season does not end at Ashland Place. TheaterMania says it closes with *Days to Remember Forever*, a full-length world premiere by Mee and Bogart, co-presented with La MaMa, with the Lazours and Machine Dazzle back on board. En Garde's own site says that audience will start out on East 4th Street before being led into La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre.

In between, TheaterMania lists a new play from Bill Martin, *The Matter of the Disappearance of Michael Anthony Smith, Jr.*, directed by Seth Bockley and running December 2 to 19. So the company goes from a Brooklyn plaza to a Manhattan block in one season.

What to Know Before You Go

**When:** Tuesday, October 13, Wednesday, October 14, and Thursday, October 15, each at 7:30 p.m.

**Where:** The plaza at 300 Ashland Place, Brooklyn.

**Cost:** Free, first come, first served. BAM offers an RSVP link for each night on its show page. It warns that an RSVP does not guarantee entry, but it helps the company prepare and lets BAM send updates.

Next Wave keeps going after the plaza goes quiet. BAM lists *How does it feel to look at nothing*, an interdisciplinary work of sound, movement and ritual from Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon, for October 21 to 25. Both artists are making their BAM debuts.

BAM's page does not list a running time or a plan for bad weather. For an outdoor show in mid-October, check before you leave, and bring a layer.

If you want to make a night of it in the neighborhood, see our story on the menswear shop and listening bar on DeKalb Avenue, which stays open until midnight on weekends.

Three nights, no ticket, one plaza. The city supplies the rest.