Current and Upcoming Productions

In Temporary Boyfriend, Permanent Lasting Power from Nile Harris and Malcolm-x Betts

IMPRESSIONS: Malcolm-x Betts + Nile Harris in "Temporary Boyfriend" at The Chocolate Factory Theater

January 2025 at The Chocolate Factory, New York, NY

, Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris stage the nuanced poetics of their long-term collaboration. Drawing from past performances in each others works including 

 at Abrons Arts Center, Harris and Betts render the friction and intrigue at the pith of their connection in this improvisatory duet. As the pair traverses the barren architecture of The Chocolate Factory, they journey across various touch points of relationality between Black gay men. From the kinship of ancestors lost to the AIDS epidemic, to contemporary manifestations of ephemeral gay brotherhood, 

 is an intimate portrait of the aesthetics of proximity and estrangement.

Temporary Boyfriend

The Shed, Center for Performance Research, The Church in Sag Harbor, and 99 Canal.

“Very Demure, Very Mindful”: A Ten- Minute Cig With Performer Nile Harris

Commissioned by The Shed and Co-Presented with PCC

 is commissioned by The Shed and presented in association with Ping Chong and Company. The performance will run from August 9-10 at The Shed’s Griffin Theater .

is a play. it's an unfinished play about love. More specifically it's a love letter to my lead actor Jim Fletcher, or perhaps it's a love letter to the white downtown theatrical avantgarde of the early 2000’s or maybe it’s my swan song to the one who got away. The performance follows a Board Member at the Shed who falls in love with a much younger commissioned artist named Nile. Running parallel to this is a fictive gesture of a jazz musician, inspired by the cornetist, Buddy Bolden, who was New Orleans’ innovator of jazz until he went “mad” and spent the remainder of his life in a mental asylum. I’ll play the part of Buddy Bolden, I mean Nile, I mean Bolden and play the clarinet and tell you why I’ve gone mad. What did Solange say in the elevator? “There’s a lot to be mad about”. The black box theater can feel like a cage—I mean a stage. And sometimes these institutional invitations can feel like a trap. Why do I feel like I’m losing my mind? Maybe it’s because I love Him.



 will be available 15 minutes before the show begins.

minor b

 is co-commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and PCC, with funding from Abrons Arts Center’s Performance AIRspace Residency which is supported by the Jerome Foundation. Additionally, the premiere of this work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by the Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. 

is a recipient of the 2022 MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.

Diary of an Overbooked Theater-Festival Surfer: Week One

In a Land of Primary Colors, Home Is Where the Bounce House Is

Nile Harris and Crackhead Barney on Art and Exploitation

Co-Commissioned and Co-Produced by PCC and Abrons Arts Center

A frenzied rant of online logic delivered outside an inflatable mausoleum, Nile Harris'

 surrounds a bounce castle purchased by Harris' friend, interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Trevor Bazile (born Miami, FL, 1996-2021). Over the course of the performance, the castle comes to represent an ephemeral monument, a besieged U.S. capital, and a simulacrum of hollow liberal care.

extends from Harris and Bazile’s collaboratively created, live-Google-document-based ‘

’ manifesto (2020), a metaphorical board meeting that asked: will the revolution have 501c3 status? In and around the sound-responsive plastic shrine,

 situates this question within the detritus of the past two years—in bitter inheritance, fugitive avatars, political theater, Tucker Carlson redacted texts, and the cleansing of money through arts philanthropy.


Figures—a gingerbread minstrel, Dimes Square vape addicts, a beloved children’s movie cowboy—appear, haunted by the fraught question: what does it mean to be an American? Enlivened by collaborators Crackhead Barney and Malcolm-x Betts, and featuring sonic composition by slowdanger and GENG PTP, 

uses clowning and live-mixed sound scoring to enact a memorial in an “Incellectual” spew of discourse.

this house is not a home

Photo Credit: Gabriel Comrie/Community Capacity Development

Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative (JBPC) 

Beyond Punishment: Stories of Justice and Healing

 is an original interview-based theater performance co-produced by the 

Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative (JBPC)

 follows the lives of four remarkable individuals who grapple with the intersections and impacts of interpersonal and state violence. The production is performed by the storytellers themselves, and gives insight into their lives, leadership, and healing journeys. Together, their stories encourage us to imagine justice beyond a punitive system that begets further violence.

written and directed by long-time PCC collaborating artist, Kirya Traber, who was invited by JBPC to bring together a group of organizers with lived experience of incarceration to share their own stories in an interview-based theater production.  The piece was created through interviews and workshops with the cast members. The theatrical format of the presentation is based on and inspired by the 

series of interview-based theater works examining issues of identity, place, and belonging. Each production is made with local partner organizations and local participants telling their own stories on stage.  

This production is one part of the JBPC’s campaign aiming to address the intersections of state and interpersonal violence, and strengthen ideas and approaches to safety and justice that do not rely on punishment, domination, and supremacy. The JBPC is working to support movements in offering compelling and cohesive stories and messaging to end violence, with the goal of realizing a world with justice beyond punishment. 