Celebrating 25 Seasons of Torn Space
2025 INTERSECTION: Performance Series
About INTERSECTION
Torn Space launches its 25th season with exciting interdisciplinary performances in the 2025 INTERSECTION: Performance Series. Returning with four signature tiers of programming: the Individual Artist Series, Site-Specific Works, Agents of Change, and the Mainstage Series, Torn Space provides Buffalo audiences and artists with a platform for avant-garde and interdisciplinary performance experiences, cultivating unique gathering spaces for creatives whose work is often siloed in specific communities, and offering original groundbreaking performances in its signature design-forward style.
In 2025 Torn Space will complete its final phase of transformative capital renovations, creating a multi-purpose arts campus on the East Side with opportunities for outdoor performance and social engagement, an improved accessible entryway for audience comfort, and expanded performer and technical space to make Torn Space a first-rate creative laboratory. This space will continue to support the growing INTERSECTION: Performance Series as it explores a wide selection of events intersecting place, generation, identity and discipline.
The Mainstage Series features a stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece, Scenes from a Marriage in February. In the Individual Artist Series, Torn Space presents: Chamber Code with poetry, jazz and live projections, Groupwork with a new original multimedia audio and visual installation, Ladies First returns with a showcase of female hip hop artists, dance solo House of Nina by Omari Wiles, and finally, an original interdisciplinary performance by Marisa Caruso, Tonic Clonic, or How to Make a Doll. Agents of Change, Torn Space’s annual educational and social justice outreach program, will continue to expand with student community engagement, a public action, and a live presentation at the theater. Site-Specific Work will include a new installation at the completely renovated 612 Fillmore and a one-day-only event at Silo City. All events feature opportunities for audiences to engage with the work and with each other in unique ways, part of Torn Space’s evolution into a creative event designer, curator and platform, continuing the experiment of community ritual as performance for 25 years.
At the center of this project is Torn Space Theater’s continued partnership with the historic Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle (AMLDC) located at 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo NY, in the heart of the Broadway/Fillmore community. Torn Space has been operating out of the AMLDC since 2000 and we are thrilled to welcome back the public to the renovated and expanded facility. The Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle was founded 130 years ago as a place for intellectual dialogue of art, theater and life to newly settled Polish immigrants who settled in Buffalo, NY and continued to arrive after World War II. The Broadway/Fillmore neighborhood is experiencing a rebirth with new immigrant populations, creating a dynamic and culturally rich environment. The AMLDC is one of Buffalo’s oldest continuously operating cultural institutions in WNY, featuring historic archives in their newly renovated library while providing old world hospitality with one of the largest assortments of Polish beers and liquors outside of Poland.
2025 INTERSECTION Performances:
MAINSTAGE SERIES
Scenes from a Marriage
Dates: February 7 – March 1, 2025 | 7:30pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
A stage adaptation of the classic 1973 film by Ingmar Bergman reveals a nuanced perspective of marriage and a relationship that spans love, parenthood, desire, deception and divorce. Experience the complexity of love and intimacy, the possibility of true connection and understanding, and whether love can survive betrayal and personal transformation in Scenes from a Marriage.
INDIVIDUAL ARTIST SERIES
Chamber Code
Date: April 4, 2025 | 7:30pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
A spontaneous, artistic sonic experience rooted in the layered principles of early code communication, Chamber Code features poet Laureate Thomas Sayers Ellis (The Poetry Foundation) who will perform spoken word along with original compositions by pianist Walter Kemp 3 (Jazziz Magazine). Kemp, with bassist Silvia Bolognesi (Italy), and drummer Warren ‘Trae’ Crudup (NYC) provide a bold and provocative soundscape embodying today’s global and domestic climate. Edreys Wajed, known for his music-centered visual art, will interpret the trio’s “code” music through site-specific live projections. One night only.
Inversion/Presence, 2024 – Photo credit: Jessica Ahrens
Groupwork
Dates: May 9, 10, 16, 17, 2025 | 7:00pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
A new original audiovisual installation experience curated by Buffalo-based artist collective Groupwork.
Ladies First
Date: June 14, 2025 | 7:00pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
A deeper look at the women driving Buffalo’s burgeoning hip-hop scene
Curated by Schondra Aytch.
Presented by Sneakvibing and Torn Space Theater
House of Nina
Date: September 9, 2025 | 7:00pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
One-night-only ballroom-inspired solo by African American West African and Vogue dancer Omari Wiles. This event is supported by NY DanceForce.
Photo credit: Rachele Schneekloth
Tonic Clonic, or How to Make a Doll
Dates: September 19-20, 2025 | 7:00pm
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
An interdisciplinary performance blending research, memoir and absurdity by Marisa Caruso.
SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE
Photo credit: nickel city heashots
Torn Space Site-Specific Installation
Dates: August 8-9, 15-16 2025
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
A new site-specific performance installation at our newly completed campus on Fillmore Avenue written and designed by Torn Space Theater.
Photo credit: Lukia Costello, motion picture (2013)
One-Night-Only Silo City Installation
Dates: September 13, 2025
Venue: 85 Silo City Row, Buffalo
Dinner and performance under the harvest evening sky within the scenic expanse of Silo City.
AGENTS OF CHANGE
agents of change, 2022 – Photo credit: nickel city headshots
Agents of Change
Dates: June, 2025
Venue: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
A collaboration with Lafayette International High School, Torn Space’s annual education and community outreach project will continue for its fourth year with a community action and a public celebration at Torn Space. This project is part of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s The Civil Writes Project.
Stay up to date by following us on social media: @tornspace on Instagram & Twitter, @TornSpaceTheater on Facebook.
The 2025 INTERSECTION: Performance Series is made possible with lead support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullen Foundation, M&T Bank, Erie County, the City of Buffalo, NY DanceForce, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
This programming is also made possible thanks to partnering organizations: Silo City, Groupwork, and the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle.