Consider the Algorithm

New York's newest performance space foregrounds togetherness

- by Jeanette Bisschops

FRIDAY NIGHT in East Williamsburg. Young people line up on the pavement, waiting to get into Pageant. The crowd is not just young, it's very young, with wardrobes ranging from medieval frocks to Y2K jeans. Once inside, they line up along the walls or squat down on the wooden floor. Pageant, a scrappy new space on the top floor of an inconspicuous building, has no lobby, no curtains to draw, no fancy lighting grid. The stage is often nothing more than a patch of floor, the performers closely surrounded by an audience consisting of their friends, colleagues and the performance-curious.

Founded by Sharleen Chidiac, Lili Dekker, Jade Manns, Owen Prum and Alexa West in 2022, in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Pageant was conceived as a much-needed community and artist-run haven for performance. It is as much a community as it is a venue: the programming responds directly to the people who show up to the events. 'It's hard to programme someone who hasn't been in the space,' West tells me this August, 'Not in a gatekeep-y way, but because we have so few resources. You need artists who understand the limitations of the space and who can tailor their work to it. And these limitations breed exciting work.'