Please support our end of year campaign to raise $45,000 by December 31st.

Were I to characterize my perspective on “the state of things” (or perhaps more quickly to the point, my mood) as we race toward the finish of another roller coaster year, I’d go with: cautious non-pessism, or as a more traditionally well-adjusted person might put it: hope.

How does one find a glimmer of optimism in the face of unrelenting…unrelenting-ness? Good question. The answer, for me, is simple – though it may not be simple to explain.

As Oprah (though it could just as easily have been Nietzsche) famously stated: hope is not a plan. Truer words never spoken, right? But hope does spark the flame, and we could all use a bit of warmth, because – like many of you, I suspect – a perhaps unhealthy measure of my emotional, physical and mental capacities have been devoted to the problem of what to do.

Well: for once, I know what to do – in other words, I have a hopeful plan – because The Chocolate Factory Theater, the small institution I co-founded and presently steward, now guided by a new leadership team, new Board members, and a renewed energy and sense of purpose, has (I believe) something truly useful and important to offer in the here and now.

The Chocolate Factory Theater is among the few remaining artist-run spaces wholly devoted to experimental performance in New York City; and the artists who sprout new worlds within its walls offer us a space to gather, uncensored and unsurveilled, in close proximity in real time and space (not to mention blood, sweat, and tears) around visions and gestures and ideas that speak bluntly to our reality and our world – not (necessarily) as we hope it to be, but as it looks, sounds, feels, and smells to us NOW.

The artists to whom I’ve devoted my life’s work are not in the business of pulling punches or softening the blow. And if you’re going to get punched, figuratively speaking of course, you just have to be present in the room when the punch is thrown.

The Chocolate Factory Theater is that room; and the artists whose work we support with commissioning funds, a fair hourly wage, multi-week residencies, premiere performances and, most importantly, faith – yielding experiences that feel intimate, inscrutable, loud, and (if we’re lucky) dangerous in the most productive way – are the punch.

It would be crass to suggest that artists, by the sheer force of their expression, will get us out of this mess; but I know in my bones – and history will back me up – that monumental change occurs slowly and then all at once; and that risk-taking artists are always – always – at the forefront of change.

Twenty-plus years in, The Chocolate Factory Theater remains important because the resource it offers – to artists, audiences, New York City and the world – is vanishingly rare. We invest in the experiment, the big push, the cock-eyed invention, the carnival mirror which somehow miraculously reflects not what we’d like to see, but what we need to see. Ours is a story of small, radical acts which burn slowly, over years, and then, on a good night, ignite within our walls, all at once.

Speaking only for myself, it’s been a year of constant, churning, sausage-making change. My hopeful plan, such as it is, is to say “please, sir, may I have some more?”

Please support The Chocolate Factory Theater with a gift of any size that feels meaningful to you.

Love,
Brian Rogers
Co-Founder / Artistic Executive Director
The Chocolate Factory Theater

2025 ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Commissioned Premieres by Malcolm-x Betts + Nile Harris, Anna Sperber, Chloe Alexandra Thompson + DB Amorin, Martita Abril, Netta Yerushalmy, Tuçe Yasak, Mieke Ulfig, Katherine Profeta, Paula Matthusen, + Alla Kovgan, and Ruth Childs
  A number of CF-commissioned projects received tours and remounts, including Temporary Boyfriend by Malcolm-x Betts + Nile Harris (at Serpentine Galleries London) and Leslie Cuyjet’s For All Your Life (at BAM)
• Some Excellent Press!
• 10 Early Stage Creative Residencies (selected via peer nomination) by Maria Baranova, Dahlak Brathwaite, Maxi Hawkeye Canion, Sharleen Chidiac, Jessica Cook, lily gold, Ayano Elson, Joanna Kotze, Ethan Philbrick, and Anh Vo
• Additional events: CATCH!, Aaron Landsman, An Evening For Fall Of Freedom
• $175,000 in direct payments to artists
• 5000+ audience members
• 25000+ viewers of our online archive
• Partnerships with Under The Radar, New York Live Arts, and Crossing The Line
• A Big Beautiful Mother’s Day Open House & Block Party

COMING IN SPRING 2026

• Commissioned Premieres by Autumn Knight, Karinne Keithley Syers, Neal Medlyn, Ayano Elson, Moriah Evans, and Jasmine Hearn
• 9 Early Stage Creative Residencies (selected via peer nomination) by Crackhead Barney, Jesse Bonnell, Amanda Horowitz, Kashia Kancey, Joanna Kotze, Maya Lee-Parritz, Kimiko Tanabe, Zerina Tye, and Lu Yim
• Additional events: reprise of Juliana May’s Optimistic Voices, Saturday Salons, and a work for young audiences by Steven Wendt + Wes Day
• Partnerships with Under The Radar, New York Live Arts, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Walker Art Center, and ISSUE Project Room