Anonymous Ensemble’s Llontop celebrates Andean culture and language and features the song-poems of Quechua poet Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco. The work is a three-part experience: an interactive installation of Peruvian heirlooms, a live-film performance for both in-person and virtual audiences, and a lively conversation with the artists about the work and Quechua empowerment. The Llontop installation invites each attendee to use their own phone or a provided mobile device to look more deeply into cultural artifacts through innovative technologies. As the audience moves through the environment, they digitally commune with the heirlooms and experience a personalized audio journey through the creation of Llontop, which helps contextualize the live poetry performance that follows. A retelling of colonization from an Indigenous perspective, Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco’s haunting song-poems are set in specific moments of Quechua history—spanning from the brutal conquest of the Incas in 1532, through the eighteenth-century Indigenous uprising of Túpac Amaru II, and into the present-day resurgence of Quechua empowerment. The poems are performed using Anonymous Ensemble’s signature live-film aesthetic, with projections, live music, and a simultaneous livestream of the performance for remote Zoom audiences. Each performance is followed by a conversation between the Llontop artists and audiences both in real space and across the Andean diaspora. Ultimately, Llontop is a powerful community experience that bridges the divides between North and South America and honors the people of the Andes—their language, their culture, their history, and their future.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Founded in Brooklyn in 2001, Anonymous Ensemble (Lucrecia Briceño, Liz Davito, Eamonn Farrell, and Jessica Weinstein) has devised new performances, interactive media, and unique theatrical events every year since. Anonymous Ensemble delights in creating original works for festivals, theaters, rock venues, warehouses, gardens, sidewalks, and sheep fields – throughout the city, the country, and the world. Incorporating original texts, music, rituals, and technologies, they foster intimate experiences between local and digitally global communities. By giving voice and agency to their audiences and collaborators, Anonymous Ensemble celebrates the complexity of the human condition through collective storytelling.

CREDITS

FUNDING + SUPPORT

Llontop was made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, by NALAC, by Net/TEN, and by the A.R.T./New York Small Theatres Fund with Production design support provided by the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York). The production has been developed through generous residencies at The Wex, 1st Stage, Royal Family Theater, Coffey Studios, Mayday Space, Eastern Mennonite University, The Princeton Quechua Workshop, The Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College, and two ASAP Residencies at Pregones/PRTT.

Lead support for Pregones/PRTT’s 2025/26 Season is provided by: Ford Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; National Latinx Theater Initiative of the Latino Theater Company; Wallace Foundation / Advancing Well-Being in the Arts; and Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in The New York Community Trust. Programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the NYS Legislature; and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

SOCIALS