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The Exponential Festival is a month-long January festival dedicated to New York City-based emerging artists working in experimental performance. The participants in this multi-artist, multi-venue festival are committed to ecstatic creativity in the face of commercialism. Exponential is driven by inclusiveness and a diversity of artists, forms, and ideas coupled with utopian resource-sharing, mentoring and the championing of risky, rigorous work in eclectic fields.
The 2025 Tenth Anniversary lineup includes:
AMA
Kenneth Keng
AMA is Ask Me Anything but it's my grandma asking and the audience answering and also she’s dying and also my country is about to be invaded for the second time this century.
Braiding Water
Xiaoyue Zhang
Braiding Water is a tender exploration of grief and a reimagining of mourning practices for unnamed losses and the dead who could not be honored.
CASSANDRA
Susannah Yugler
CASSANDRA depicts the acquisition of a women-led talent agency by its parent company and the interpersonal turmoil that ensues. Inspired by Euripides’ The Trojan Women, CASSANDRA is a “satyr play”—musing on New York as a Trojan symbol coping with the weight of impending disaster.
Cool Zone: The Lost Episode
Vape Kid Jr., Sir Cum Sized & Excess Materials
Hey kids! Do you remember “Vape Kid’s Cool Zone?” A Fascist brainwashing program disguised as a public access children’s TV Show? Follow America’s Darling—a 5-foot sentient puppet named Courtney as he learns what it means to serve his country.
Emphasis Mine
Title:Point
An Author explains. Familiar characters inhabit new occupations. Mysterious grievances are aired. A Doctor operates. Reality folds and indentity manifolds.
Gilda, with an Olive
Sophie Zmorrod
In the final act of Giuseppe Verdi’s acclaimed opera Rigoletto, Gilda waits inside of a body bag onstage for her cue to die. She has some time to think about her life choices.
Happy Birthday, Curiosity Rover!
Laura Galindo
A robot on a mission and a wandering alien find each other on Mars. A play with music about getting your solitude punctured, about the strange in stranger, about loving what will always go away.
haircut play :€
Eulàlia Comas
In haircut play :€, a girl wants a haircut and no one will give her one, until she stumbles on a hidden language of gates and keepers, gasses and lights.
MEOW!
Matthew Antoci & Meaghan Robichaud
A noir cabaret, an Americana burlesque, a fading starlet’s last chance at the spotlight: Matthew & Meaghan’s MEOW! revisits the documentary classic Grey Gardens through the eyes of Little Edie’s mysterious city life of the 80s. Hosted by a pair of shape-shifting oracles in 50-inch wigs—lip syncs, looks and lots of razzmatazz create a send-off for America as we know it.
Music
Hayley Stahl
Hayley Stahl is a writer from Michigan based in New York. Her work has been supported by Yaddo and Clubbed Thumb. More info to come!
PRISONCORE!
kanishk pandey
Lucky is starting his job as a guard at a new innovative prison. Rain is continuing her job as a dealer for a popular online casino. In a moment of indifferent cruelty, the two lives intersect and discover what it means to fight for freedom—and who gets sacrificed along the way.
ORACLE
Ring Yuqi Yang & Casey Woodall
In the dim light of a cluttered bedroom, Dusty Soothsayer reigns as an unlikely online celebrity. This reclusive prophet, trapped within the confines of their own fears, has become a beacon for the digitally connected masses. Their gift? A body that maintains perfect equilibrium, a living barometer of cosmic energies.
Neck Down
Nic Adams
Set in New York City the morning before an ancient coin auction, Neck Down is an aural hallucination on the American daydream and the heroism of broke artists.
SalOn! "DOUBLE GROOVE"
Come for the smorgasbord of micro-acts, stay for the end-of-festival party!
Sapphire
Ella Lee Davidson
When self-identified real-ass bitch and Angry Black Woman Peola gets a BBI (Be Better Implant), she finally has a chance at happiness and embracing her divine feminine, as well as finding a man. Sapphire is a surreal afro-futurist satire about the stereotypes we give ourselves and others, the idea of perfection and the ideal woman and the concept of change.
To Bridge Ten Millennia
CAROL
To Bridge Ten Millennia is a multimedia performance installation, based on the proposal of an "Atomic Priesthood” which creates artificial "ritual-and-legend" in order to steer future generations away from hazardous nuclear sites.
Tongues
Yibin Wang and Yejia Sun
Tongues is a gathering, an event, and a performance where we’ll re-enact the most mundane daily moments, belt out our go-to karaoke songs and, of course, explore the art of swearing in our native Asian languages.
u are the dream
Allyson Dwyer
a two-hander internet triptych—a love story between the internet and homo sapiens <3
We Live To Die: The Grieving Widows Club EPISODE THREE
Leonie Bell & LOCAL GRANDMA
The final episode of a three-part miniseries about community theater-doing maids + grieving widows + murder.
winter solstice
Lal Ensari
winter solstice is a site-specific gathering that aims to bring some lightness, joy and celebration into the darkness of winter.
The 2025 Tenth Anniversary lineup includes:
AMA
Kenneth Keng
AMA is Ask Me Anything but it's my grandma asking and the audience answering and also she’s dying and also my country is about to be invaded for the second time this century.
Braiding Water
Xiaoyue Zhang
Braiding Water is a tender exploration of grief and a reimagining of mourning practices for unnamed losses and the dead who could not be honored.
CASSANDRA
Susannah Yugler
CASSANDRA depicts the acquisition of a women-led talent agency by its parent company and the interpersonal turmoil that ensues. Inspired by Euripides’ The Trojan Women, CASSANDRA is a “satyr play”—musing on New York as a Trojan symbol coping with the weight of impending disaster.
Cool Zone: The Lost Episode
Vape Kid Jr., Sir Cum Sized & Excess Materials
Hey kids! Do you remember “Vape Kid’s Cool Zone?” A Fascist brainwashing program disguised as a public access children’s TV Show? Follow America’s Darling—a 5-foot sentient puppet named Courtney as he learns what it means to serve his country.
Emphasis Mine
Title:Point
An Author explains. Familiar characters inhabit new occupations. Mysterious grievances are aired. A Doctor operates. Reality folds and indentity manifolds.
Gilda, with an Olive
Sophie Zmorrod
In the final act of Giuseppe Verdi’s acclaimed opera Rigoletto, Gilda waits inside of a body bag onstage for her cue to die. She has some time to think about her life choices.
Happy Birthday, Curiosity Rover!
Laura Galindo
A robot on a mission and a wandering alien find each other on Mars. A play with music about getting your solitude punctured, about the strange in stranger, about loving what will always go away.
haircut play :€
Eulàlia Comas
In haircut play :€, a girl wants a haircut and no one will give her one, until she stumbles on a hidden language of gates and keepers, gasses and lights.
MEOW!
Matthew Antoci & Meaghan Robichaud
A noir cabaret, an Americana burlesque, a fading starlet’s last chance at the spotlight: Matthew & Meaghan’s MEOW! revisits the documentary classic Grey Gardens through the eyes of Little Edie’s mysterious city life of the 80s. Hosted by a pair of shape-shifting oracles in 50-inch wigs—lip syncs, looks and lots of razzmatazz create a send-off for America as we know it.
Music
Hayley Stahl
Hayley Stahl is a writer from Michigan based in New York. Her work has been supported by Yaddo and Clubbed Thumb. More info to come!
PRISONCORE!
kanishk pandey
Lucky is starting his job as a guard at a new innovative prison. Rain is continuing her job as a dealer for a popular online casino. In a moment of indifferent cruelty, the two lives intersect and discover what it means to fight for freedom—and who gets sacrificed along the way.
ORACLE
Ring Yuqi Yang & Casey Woodall
In the dim light of a cluttered bedroom, Dusty Soothsayer reigns as an unlikely online celebrity. This reclusive prophet, trapped within the confines of their own fears, has become a beacon for the digitally connected masses. Their gift? A body that maintains perfect equilibrium, a living barometer of cosmic energies.
Neck Down
Nic Adams
Set in New York City the morning before an ancient coin auction, Neck Down is an aural hallucination on the American daydream and the heroism of broke artists.
SalOn! "DOUBLE GROOVE"
Come for the smorgasbord of micro-acts, stay for the end-of-festival party!
Sapphire
Ella Lee Davidson
When self-identified real-ass bitch and Angry Black Woman Peola gets a BBI (Be Better Implant), she finally has a chance at happiness and embracing her divine feminine, as well as finding a man. Sapphire is a surreal afro-futurist satire about the stereotypes we give ourselves and others, the idea of perfection and the ideal woman and the concept of change.
To Bridge Ten Millennia
CAROL
To Bridge Ten Millennia is a multimedia performance installation, based on the proposal of an "Atomic Priesthood” which creates artificial "ritual-and-legend" in order to steer future generations away from hazardous nuclear sites.
Tongues
Yibin Wang and Yejia Sun
Tongues is a gathering, an event, and a performance where we’ll re-enact the most mundane daily moments, belt out our go-to karaoke songs and, of course, explore the art of swearing in our native Asian languages.
u are the dream
Allyson Dwyer
a two-hander internet triptych—a love story between the internet and homo sapiens <3
We Live To Die: The Grieving Widows Club EPISODE THREE
Leonie Bell & LOCAL GRANDMA
The final episode of a three-part miniseries about community theater-doing maids + grieving widows + murder.
winter solstice
Lal Ensari
winter solstice is a site-specific gathering that aims to bring some lightness, joy and celebration into the darkness of winter.
Performance Schedule:
Visit theexponentialfestival.org for full schedule.
