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Since 2009, 600 HIGHWAYMEN (Abigail Browde & Michael Silverstone) have been making live art that, through a variety of radical approaches, illuminates the inherent poignancy of people coming together. The work exists at the intersection of theater, dance, contemporary performance, and civic encounter.

Their Obie Award-winning works have been seen in the U.S. at The Public Theater, American Repertory Theater, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Kimmel Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Luminato Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art, On The Boards, Spoleto Festival, Walker Arts Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Woolly Mammoth, and internationally at Centre Pompidou and Parc de la Villette (France), Dublin Theatre Festival (Ireland), Theaterformen (Germany), Noorderzon (The Netherlands), Theaterspektakel (Switzerland), Onassis Cultural Centre (Greece), Bristol Old Vic (UK), OzAsia Festival (Australia), Salzburg Festival (Austria), and The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (UAE).

600 HIGHWAYMEN are recipients of Switzerland’s ZKB Patronize Prize, and their work has been nominated for two Bessie Awards, a Drama League Award, and Austria’s Nestroy Prize. In 2016, Abby and Michael were named artist fellows by the New York Foundation for the Arts. They are currently Associate Artists of IN SITU, the European platform for artistic creation in public space.

We (Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone – known collectively as 600 HIGHWAYMEN) are a theatermaking duo who are aiming at a radical approach to making live art by creating intimacy amongst strangers and illuminating the inherent poignancy of people coming together. Our work, which we’ve been making since 2009, exists at the intersection of theater, dance, contemporary performance, and civic encounter.

The work is performed by diverse bodies, pushing on the parameters of what we call virtuosity. We work with people from various backgrounds (some experienced performers; some complete novices). The rooms where our work rehearses and performs are inclusive, unpretentious, and authentic. We want audiences and performers to never lose sight of what’s really going on in our public events, which is people sharing time and space together.

With an overlap of gesture, movement, athletics and sculpture, the work we make fixates on the surface of the body and its inherent vulnerability, and what the body can communicate. We hunt for the precise physical language that reveals each performer. It is as if the performer would say aloud, “I am simply me, moving this way. I am me, doing this dance.” Our performers are not pretending to be someone else; rather they are themselves –– for us, for now. Perhaps if the performers can lead with openness, authenticity, strength, and curiosity, the entire room can do the same.

As a pair, we write the words that are spoken, and we build the specific verbal and physical language around all the people in the room. The words should seem both innate to the performer, yet also borrowed and external. We’re asking the audience to meet the text halfway – to hear the words we have written and find themselves in the space between the words and the performers. We’re not after any sort of realism other than the realism of being together in a room. That is transporting enough.

Through all of this, we are trying to boil away for audiences all the things that are assumed to be required in a theater. We like story, but it isn’t essential. We like acting, but it isn’t essential. We like words, but even those aren’t always needed. To us, it’s always and only about an exchange between the audience and the humans who are performing. Period. This obsession with the very nature of performance – the ephemeral transfer of energy between the people who’ve agreed to come into a room – is the very thing we’re chasing. It’s an attempt at connection, community, and care for everyone who is present.

We’re interested in what we cannot grasp and what we’ve never done, and thus each of our projects is a different imperative composed of a new process, partnership, cast, and risk. We’ve come to realize that the way we collaborate and the curious nature of each journey is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, an antidote to our unrest and a balm for our obsessive curiosities. We’re after the heart of something big ­­– which leaves us always searching, an ongoing process of peeling away at this fragile, impermanent, yet utterly indestructible art.

*commissioning presenter

A2SF (Ann Arbor, MI)
Abrons Arts Center (NYC)
American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, MA)
ANTI Festival (Finland)
Arizona Arts Live (Tucson, AZ)
*The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (UAE)
AT&T Performing Arts Center (Dallas, TX)
Boom Arts (Portland, OR)
Bristol Old Vic / In Between Time (UK)
BYU Arts (Provo, UT)
Canadian Stage (Toronto, CAN)
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (Los Angeles, CA)
Carolina Performing Arts (Chapel Hill, NC)
Centre Pompidou (France)
Centre Pompidou Málaga (Spain)
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (College Park, MD)
Denver Film Festival (Denver, CO)
Dublin Theatre Festival (Ireland)
Duryea Presbyterian Church (NYC)
FAROUT Festival (Milan, Italy)
*Festival Theaterformen (Germany)
*FIAF / Crossing the Line Festival (NYC)
Figuren Festival (Germany)
FITS/Sibiu Fest (Romania)
Fringe Arts (Philadelphia, PA)
Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX)
Homo Novus Festival (Latvia)
Hong Kong Live Arts (Hong Kong)
ICA (Boston, MA)
In Between Time (UK)
International Festival of Arts & Ideas (New Haven, CT)
Invisible Dog Art Center (NYC)
Israel Festival (Jerusalem, ISR)
Kimmel Center (Philadelphia, PA)
La Jolla Playhouse (La Jolla, CA)
Lókal International Theater Festival (Reykjavik, Iceland)
Luminato Festival (Toronto, CAN)
MESS Festival (Sarajevo, B/H)
The Momentary (Bentonville, AR)
*Mount Tremper Arts (Mt Tremper, NY)
Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL)
Noorderzon (The Netherlands)
Norfolk/Norwich Festival (UK)
NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (NYC)
On The Boards (Seattle, WA)
Onassis Cultural Centre (Greece)
OzAsia Festival (Australia)
PAC NYC (NYC)
Parc de la Villette (France)
Park Avenue Armory (NYC)
Portland Ovations (Portland, ME)
*The Public Theater / Under the Radar Festival (NYC)
PuSH Festival (Toronto)
River to River Festival (NYC)
*Salzburg Festival (Austria)
Sardegna Teatro (Sardegna, Italy)
Singapore International Festival of Arts – SIFA (Singapore)
Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC)
*Stanford Live at Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
Sundance Institute at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA)
SUNY Purchase (Purchase, NY)
Take Me Somewhere (Scotland)
*Talking Band (NYC)
*Temple Contemporary (Philadelphia, PA)
*Torn Space (Buffalo, NY)
UMMA (Ann Arbor, MI)
University of Florida (Gainesville, FL)
University Settlement (NYC)
Volkstheater Wien (Austria)
Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN)
Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT)
Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH)
Williams College (Williams, MA)
Woolly Mammoth (Washington, DC)
Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Switzerland)

GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS:
2009: Puffin Foundation
2012: Foundation for Contemporary Art, Emergency Grant
2014: New England Foundation for the Arts, National Theater Project
2015: Foundry Theatre Tom Proehl Producing Fellowship
2015/17: Mellon Foundation, New York Theater Program
2015/17: Jerome Foundation
2016: New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists Fellowship in Choreography
2017/18: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, USAI Grant (multiple)
2019: Foundation for Contemporary Art, Emergency Grant
2019: New England Foundation for the Arts, Transition Grant
2021: In Situ, Associate Artist
2021: The Bogliasco Foundation

RESIDENCIES:
2011: Invisible Dog Art Center
2014: Sundance Institute at MASS MoCA
2015: Park Avenue Armory
2015: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Process Space
2016: On the Boards
2016: Arizona State University
2016: University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
2018: Camargo Foundation
2018: Collaborative Arts Initiative, University of Buffalo/Torn Space
2019: NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, Dept of Drama
2021: University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

AWARDS:
2014: Obie Award
2015: Bessie Nomination (Outstanding Production, EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR)
2015: ZKB Prize (EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR)
2017: Nestroy Award Nomination (KASIMIR & KAROLINE)
2019: Bessie Nomination (Outstanding Production, THE FEVER)
2021: Drama League Award Nomination (Outstanding Interactive or Socially-Distanced Theater, A THOUSAND WAYS)

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