Coup d'Espace

In Development

Make Granny Great Again MGGA: A Coup d’Espace experience is the latest work by Stefanie Batten Bland, which has been awarded a 2026 NYSCA and 2023 Creative Capital funding.places resistance and performance in plain sight. In honor of the great pioneer Ellen Stewart, founder, artistic director, and producer of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, SBB believes in artists’ capacity for taking creative risks in space and work is resistance in plain sight. As we continue through the reality of our country's administration, this new project takes guidance from ancestors as a way to safeguard discourse and challenge cultural erasure when all in same shared spaces.

 Says SBB: “I am passionate about spaces and places that resonate with me; it's the loft kid in me. Immersive experiences are deeply rooted in mixed realities. This type of proximity in performance-making has the potential to bring us together. What my parents' generation began in the 1960s and '70s is now evolving into the next level of artistic expression, placing intention at the heart of the experience.”

 “Coup, with its labyrinthine design within homes, acknowledges that while we share the same spaces in real life, we do not all feel the same way in them. We, the people—and I, an African American woman—are more complex and multidimensional than a single definition. Therefore, my response to existing inside of dictatorship is to create works that center on action, care, and conversation through visceral theatre making. Cultural economy always nestled free thinking. I hope to make Coup’s all across the country.” 

Coup d'Espace is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.