ABOUT NIC
Nic Benacerraf is an artist, facilitator, and public scholar. This site showcases his theatrical designs, both as an artistic leader and as a collaborator.
Nic engineers consent-based systems and environments for genuine human encounters in theaters, galleries, concert halls, and streets. As a creative director, he is founding partner of Edge Effect Media Group, after serving for 15 years as a founding co-artistic director of The Assembly. Favorite Assembly projects include SEAGULLMACHINE and HOME/SICK.
For over a decade he has developed original techniques to build design in collaboration with performers and authors in the rehearsal environment. His award-winning work as a scenographer has brought him into collaboration with Judith Malina (Here We Are with The Living Theatre), Trusty Sidekick (Up & Away at Lincoln Center), Soul Inscribed (CANNABIS! at Prototype Festival, HERE, La MaMa), Waterwell (GOODBAR at Under the Radar Festival), Lars Jan (On the Frontier at Center for New Performance), Baba Israel (WORD.SOUND.POWER. at BAM), Meiyin Wang (so go the ghosts of méxico La MaMa), Kristin Marting (IDIOT & Looking At You at HERE) and Goat in the Road (Foreign to Myself in New Orleans). He has assisted luminaries such as Richard Foreman and Mimi Lien.
He is a proud graduate of Wesleyan University (BA in Theater and Sociology) and CalArts (MFA in Scenic Design; MA in Aesthetics & Politics). He has taught at Brooklyn College, CalArts, and Kean University, and has lectured or conducted workshops at Sarah Lawrence College, Hamilton College, The New School, Baruch College, Hunter College, as well as at Richard Schechner’s courses at NYU.
Nic is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is a founding member of the program's student-faculty Anti-Racism Committee, and also a Mellon Humanities Public Fellow with the PublicsLab. His dissertation research unpacks the techniques of Public Relations as a form of theatrical population control, and its emergence alongside Political Theatre.