CREDITS.
It takes a village. Meet the team behind TORCHES.
MEET THE TEAM.
TORCHES is conceived by Kristin Marting.
Project Lead/Peer Interviewer | Kristin Marting
Videographer/Editor | Moti Margolin
Production Assistant | Murphy Severtson
Web Design | Design by Véronique
Theme Music | Kamala Sankaram
Partner | HowlRound Theatre Commons
Thanks to Jamie Gahlon, HERE, Emily Margolin, Mariana Newhard,
Ramona Ostrowski, Julia Schachnik, Alex White, Stephanie Ybarra.
Discover team bios below. Discover artist interviews here.
KRISTIN MARTING.
I am an award-winning visionary artist and arts leader in contemporary performance. I am the Founding Artistic Director Emeritus of HERE, an award-winning progressive arts center in lower Manhattan where I cultivated artists and programs all events for two performance spaces over 30 years–including 18 OBIE-award winners –for an annual audience of 30,000. I also co-founded and co-curated PROTOTYPE, a groundbreaking city-wide annual opera and music theatre festival, producing 13 celebrated editions.
My work has been recognized with an OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement, a Proclamation from the NY State Assembly for steadfast leadership at HERE, a nytheatre.com Person of the Decade for outstanding contribution, a Leader to Watch by Art Table, and a BAX10 Award for Arts Leadership.
As a dedicated cultural advocate and political organizer, I’ve led art actions, advised policymakers, served on arts boards and panels for the NEA, TCG, NYSCA, DCLA, and ART/NY. I currently serve on the NYC Theatre and Live Performance Industry Council as well as on Community Board #2 in NYC. I volunteer on legislative strategy for NYS Assemblymember Harvey Epstein. I served as Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women. I regularly teach and lecture on directing, creative producing, and arts leadership at universities nationwide.
As a director and writer of hybrid work based in NYC, I have created 36 works for the stage. I work in a collaborative, process-driven way to fuse different disciplines into a cohesive whole. Selected premieres: BAM, HERE, Ohio Theatre, and Soho Rep. Selecting touring: 7 Stages, Berkshire Festival, Brown, MCA, New World, Painted Bride, Perishable, UMass, Moscow Art Theatre and Oslo. Selected workshops: Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Public Theatre, and Target Margin. Recipient of two prestigious MAP Fund awards and reviews in all major NY media.
I am also a co-founder of the tiny mythic theatre company and a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts with honors.
MOTI MARGOLIN.
Moti Margolin is an actor, playwright and songwriter who has appeared in numerous TV shows, and also plays throughout the city. Simultaneously he has taken up videography as his spotlight side hustle with a specialization in filming theater and dance. Through this, he has built long lasting and incredibly rewarding relationships with numerous stalwarts of the downtown theater community, including HERE Arts Center, The Flea and many others. As such he's particularly excited to witness the conversations for this project. For his own theater work, please ask about "Fourth Avenue (Brooklyn)," coming February 19-20 at The Performance Project at University Settlement.
MURPHY SEVERTSON.
Murphy Severtson is a performance artist, composer, and teaching artist whose work is inspired by queer and trans joy and despair, climate change, Florida, crustaceans, breath, and repetition. They work as a teaching artist at the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program, Little Orchestra, and Opera on Tap. Their opera, Carcinize!, will be produced and premiered in April 2026 as part of Overtone Industries’ Original Vision program. Alongside Mirage Auto Depot, they are also developing the devised theater piece LES BI(T)CHES, in residency at Rattlestick Theater.
They are honored to witness so many inspiring and beautiful conversations as a part of the TORCHES team!
HOWLROUND
THEATRE COMMONS.
HowlRound Theatre Commons is a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide that amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners. Using a commons-based approach, HowlRound invites open participation from theatremakers worldwide around shared values and envisions a theatre field where resources and power are shared equitably in all directions, contributing to a more just and sustainable world.
WEBSITE PHOTO AND VIDEO CREDITS.
The Hang, by Taylor Mac, Machine Dazzle, Niegel Smith, HERE, photo by Maria Baranova; Looking at You (2020), by Kamala Sankaram, Rob Handel, and Kristin Marting, HERE, Opera on Tap, Experiments in Opera; Cairns, by Gelsey Bell, photo by Maria Baranova; Bombay Rickey, Kamala Sankaram, photo by Corey Weaver; Disposable Men, by James Scruggs, directed by Kristin Marting, HERE, photo courtesy of the artist; What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck, directed by Oliver Butler, Summerworks 2017. Pictured: Rosdely Ciprian, Heidi Schreck. Photo by Elke Young; Lunch Bunch by Adrian Einspanier, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, Summerworks 2019. Pictured: Keilly McQuail. Photo by Elke Young; Alex Romania's Face Eaters, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Spring 2024. Photo by Brian Rogers; 18 Stanzas Sung To a Tatar Reed Whistle, by Hanne Tierney, photo courtesy of the artist.
Artist photo credits are listed on each individual page.
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