Director: Wiley Hausam
- To provide important performing artists the unconditional opportunity to take risks and to create work across multiple disciplines.
- To present work by contemporary artists of all fields of the performing arts in the highest professional capacity available.
- To integrate fully that work into the academic life of the university in multiple ways to foster learning, participation, and creativity.
- To maintain The Alexander Kasser Theater as a state of the performing arts facility and therefore superbly responsive to distinctive artistic impulses.
- To maximize the value to the University of having its public arts programming positioned as innovative and daring.
ACP’s overarching premise is to sustain its role as a leader in the advocacy of contemporary artists in this country by producing and presenting their works at Montclair State University, and in doing so to ensure that work of exemplary artists is seen at venues worldwide.
Integral to this mission is the need to encourage audiences to become more adventurous and open to new artistic experiences. Since its inception, the PEAK Performances series has set out to challenge and rethink the way independent theaters operate and to create a bold new model for presenters in the Garden state.
Under the ACP umbrella, PEAK Performances is a leading model nationally for innovative producing and presenting.
PEAK PERFORMANCES
Under the artistic direction of ACP’s Executive Director, Jedediah Wheeler, PEAK Performances has achieved international recognition for presenting and producing innovative works in dance, music theater, and opera. With a celebrated emphasis on interdisciplinary work, PEAK has hosted 100+ World and American Premieres since opening in 2005.
By bringing together artists of uncommon imagination with diverse audiences of adventuresome spirit, PEAK promotes a greater appreciation of human possibility.
ALEXANDER KASSER THEATER
The Alexander Kasser Theater is located on the campus of Montclair State University, it is a 500-seat multi-use theatre for performances of drama, musical theater, dance, orchestra concerts, solo recitals, and chamber opera. As it was envisioned by Dr. Susan Cole, President of MSU, with generous support by Mary Kasser Mochary and her brother Michael Kasser, and led by Executive Director Jedediah Wheeler, The Kasser has become a place for artistic discovery. It is recognized, nationally and internationally, for its artistic innovation, superior production standards, and conviction that individual revelation is a force of nature. The Kasser is a magnet for professional artists who are at the forefront of their disciplines.