Rubén Polendo, right, and Justin Nestor at MITU580 in Brooklyn. The performance space is Theater Mitu's home for a vibrant community of innovative theatre makers.
This week at the Obie Awards, the American Theater Wing honored Rubén Polendo, Justin Nestor, and their company Theater Mitu with the Ross Wetzsteon Award. Named for the former Village Voice theatre editor, the special Obie award recognizes theatre artists advancing and sustaining innovation in the field.
During the Obie Award ceremony, Theater Mitu was cited “for championing exploration in the theater, and for stewarding a new era of artists who believe in the same.”
The award and praise are well deserved. From its Brooklyn-based performance space MITU580, the company is known for pushing boundaries and creating a vibrant community of innovative theatre makers. From an initial concept through development and performance, Theater Mitu’s productions integrate technology in bold ways.
This spring, Theater Mitu will be in residence at the Museum of Science Hayden Planetarium and ArtsEmerson in Boston to present Utopian Hotline, a project developed with the SETI Institute and ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative. Combining a telephone hotline, a vinyl record, and a live planetarium performance, the work invites audiences to reimagine the future through an interactive archive of voicemails. Selected for NASA’s Lunar Codex Project, it is the first performance-based artwork bound for the Moon, encrypted on a gold disc and attached to a lunar probe, along with a curated number of contemporary art works. This project exemplifies Theater Mitu’s commitment to bridging art, technology, and science.
At Tisch, Polendo and colleagues recently launched a new training program The Innovation Studio. A theatre research laboratory for advance-level Drama students, the studio, like Mitu, engages exciting technologies as a central collaborator, preparing the next generation of artists to push boundaries and innovate their work and the field.
Several Theater Mitu initiatives support area artists. Among others, its Artist-at-Home program shares Theater Mitu’s resources with emerging and established artists in Brooklyn.
“This award in particular celebrates and honors the work that it has taken to build, to sustain, and to continue the work of Theater Mitu. It celebrates Theater Mitu’s past, our present, and the exciting and remarkable home we have in Brooklyn and are excited to share with artists,” said Polendo. “But it also acknowledges our future. We are invested in the future of our field, in innovation and in supporting our community.”
Theater Mitu’s acceptance speech is available at 68th Obie Awards.
