On 9 March 2026, TORCHES will continue with a conversation with award winning artist James Scruggs who creates live and virtual, large-scale, topical, often interactive theatrical productions.
James Scruggs is an artist who creates live and virtual, large-scale, topical, often interactive theatrical productions. He’s the recipient of multiple grants and awards. He was recently awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship Grant. He was the first playwright commissioned by The Perelman Arts Center, NYC; he wrote The American Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was awarded a MAP Grant. He was also recently awarded an NPN Creation Fund Grant to create OFF THE RECORD: Acts of Restorative Justice which was commissioned by ArtsEmerson in Boston, The Center at West Park in NYC, and Art2Action in Tampa, Florida. This piece will be presented at HERE Arts Center in Spring of 2026. His 3/Fifths SupremacyLand (2017) was a fully immersive, interactive ethno-theme park, exploring racism, for which he was awarded a MAP Grant and a 2016 Creative Capital Grant. James Scruggs has a BFA in film from School of Visual Arts.
TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance
As co-founder of HERE Arts Center—described by the Obie committee as “a lasting home for the weird and wild in downtown performance”—Kristin Marting spent the past three decades immersed in making, witnessing, and supporting groundbreaking performance in New York City. TORCHES is a much needed exploration of New York City’s unique and influential downtown performance world from the 1990s through the 2020s. Part memoir, part oral history, and part cultural inquiry, TORCHES offers in-depth video conversations with more than thirty of the most imaginative and boundary pushing artists working in the field today. TORCHES is both a living archive and an offering for the future. Learning about these artists and their work is not just looking back; it can ignite what’s coming next. They are not only inventors of form—they are keepers of community, fire-starters for our future. See more about the project on the TORCHES website at torchesnyc.org.
