I met Andrew Schneider in 2024 when we were in residence at Loghaven in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was working on new work in the studio next door, and I got to see some of the equipment he uses for his large-scale, complex theater works. While in Knoxville, Andrew shared clips from NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS), so when it came to Texas as Part of South by Southwest (SXSW), I jumped at the chance to experience it firsthand. The piece incorporates innovative technology to enable individualized experiences in the theater. Utilizing a complex sound design and thousands of hand-prepared, computer-controlled LED lights, Schneider creates an experience that evokes the cosmos, prompting viewers to reflect on their lives, experiences, and memories. I caught up with Andrew the following day to ask him some questions about the inspiration and creative process for this amazing project.
Andrew Schneider, “NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS),” 2022
Gabriel Martinez (GM): How did you create NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS), and when did it debut? This isn’t the first time it has been shown.
Andrew Schneider (AS): It premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December of 2022 and ran for three and a half weeks. It has been staged at several venues over the past three years, including the Walker Arts Center, Williams College, the NYUAD Arts Center in Abu Dhabi, and now here in Austin as part of SXSW and Texas Performing Arts.
I had a series of residencies before that, but most of the construction of the performance’s infrastructure happened in my studio in Gowanus during the pandemic when everything shut down.
I was in the middle of making a dance piece in Berlin with Sasha Waltz, when I first heard the pandemic rumors. There were rumblings about something coming, and then suddenly everything got canceled. I had considered staying in Berlin for a while, but then they announced that all expats needed to return to the U.S. immediately or risk being denied re-entry. That exact same day, Brown University, where I was teaching a semester-long course, said, “Hey, you have some leftover research money available.” So, I returned to New York with this idea for a project. I wasn’t even sure what it was exactly, just some lights and some sound that would work together somehow. I ordered about $2,000 worth of equipment.
That next year turned out to be an unexpected gift of time to develop the piece. I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t just building a show — I was simultaneously building the tools needed to make the show. I’d construct part of the system, test it out, think, “Hmm, that looks cool,” and then build on that.
I don’t know how to make music, but I’d play some chords on the piano — record them, loop them, reverse them, turn them into these MIDI instruments. The visual elements would make me think of certain sounds, and then hearing those sounds would suggest new visual possibilities. They kept bouncing back and forth like that until, eventually, they came together as a complete piece.
I knew I didn’t want it to be a gallery installation. I wanted it to be a theater thing. I didn’t want people just wandering in and out whenever — I wanted it to have a beginning, middle, and end. I want you to come in and not know what you’re about to do. You walk in, and there’s nothing to see. You can’t see your hand in front of your face.
An audience member experiencing “NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS)”
Then, this tiny single point of light appears way off in the distance, a star. Maybe it’s speaking directly to you — personally inviting you in. I started recording myself on a microphone, saying, “Hey, come on in.” I do that live for everyone who comes to the showings. I learn everyone’s name and invite them in. They walk in one by one in total darkness. We build trust before the show so that we can do that. As people move through the space, I imagine them leaving glowing trails of light behind them — it makes me think about how every little decision in your life leads you to this exact moment.
I can think about where I was standing just a minute ago, or where I was before I came to this building today, or where I was last week. Where were we both five years ago? Complete strangers, no connection at all. What hospitals were we born in? What series of unlikely events had to happen to bring us both here now? That realization — that we somehow ended up sharing this space at this moment — feels like this little miracle that’s actually happening all the time. That’s what got me thinking about all the cosmology elements — being in exactly the right place at the right time, how astronomically unlikely life is, but here we are on this one planet we know about.
GM: The existential questioning came from that moment in which you were creating — during the pandemic?
AS: Absolutely. It had always been there for me from the moment I was making theater. The first show I made was about parallel universes — what if two parallel universes collided and you met your doppelganger?
I don’t want to make a show where you follow someone else’s journey; I want to make a show where you follow your own journey. How do you do that? Well, this was the perfect opportunity. You couldn’t have a bunch of people in a room together because of COVID-19. You can invite in one or two people at a time so you can talk to them specifically, lead them around, and have them think about their life experiences — grief and community.
I didn’t know this at the time, but the pandemic really changed things. It changed what a lot of people were willing to think about and willing to talk about. People were willing to go deeper. Day-to-day conversation became different. I always wanted to have this be a source of content, but it wasn’t possible until people were more receptive to it because of the cultural moment that was happening.
I was making this thing because we were losing people left and right. I premiered the show, and right before it went to my hometown, my dad died. He was in the hospital, and I was in a show in the theater. I got the call from my mom saying, “He’s not going to last much longer.” I ran out of the theater, rented a car, drove home, and missed him by 20 minutes. I say that, and it sounds super dramatic, but I spent 42 years of my life with him. I didn’t miss him — I missed seeing him the very last time.
There’s so much research about grief and loss that went into this project, and I think about it all the time. Many of the lines in the piece reflect this: “The last time that you hold someone’s hand, the last time you share an ice cream cone, or tell somebody that you love them, the last time that somebody remembers you, your grandfather’s last breath.” I had been thinking about this every day, and then my dad died, and nothing prepared me for that. Not even close. Not even, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this. So this is familiar territory.” There’s talking about it and researching it, but when the moment happens, none of that matters.
GM: You’re never prepared. When you lose someone, you lose all of this knowledge, all of these experiences that that person brought to your life. It’s not documented anywhere — it exists only in our memory.
When you enter the darkened venue for the performance, all of these different factors open up — way beyond the room in which you experience it. Time, space, cosmology, mortality. There are so many avenues to pursue as you walk through the piece.
AS: Yes, there are so many avenues of thought to follow. If you’re not into this, then you can be into this. Even the most disinterested person can hang out there for a while. It allows people to let down their guard and not have an expectation of the piece. Even if you don’t want to think about any of this stuff. Let it take you somewhere. The only way that people will get meaning from it is if they stop and sit there.
Andrew Schneider, “NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS),” 2022
GM: The sound design is so stunning. I sat through a couple cycles and focused on the piece’s different components. The breadth of sonic texture with the spoken word section, the electronic sounds, and the samples is an incredible experience, but the section with the birds, when all the other cacophonous sounds drop out, was my favorite. The return of nature is something that I associate with the pandemic. As people retreated into their homes for the lockdown, birds, animals, and fish were like, “Thank you. Finally.”
AS: Yeah, 100%. That bird section, in particular, really represents following my instincts. Initially, my sound collaborator and I developed a version for just eight people at a time, but theaters said, “We can’t sell this; we can’t tour it financially at this scale.” I expanded it to accommodate about fifty people in more of a gallery-style setup where you can come and go as you please. Walking through, you encounter individual stories and voices — a dog panting, a radio interview, someone leaving a voice message.
All those recordings are stories and thoughts left behind by people who experienced the piece before you. In the first version, you’re being tracked as an audience member, and as you get close to one star, one of those sound sources is embedded in that star and gets brighter and louder as you walk up to it. As you walk away, it gets dimmer and quieter. There are 77 distinct little sounds telling their stories throughout the space. When you come out, there’s a recording booth with a list of questions that you can answer. The core idea is that we can’t physically be here together in the same moment, but we can share the same space across different times.
I had this impulse — what happens when all that human commotion suddenly disappears? What remains? Birds. Those birds are literally dinosaurs that survived mass extinction events. They’ve been here for ages; they’ll still be here long after we’re gone. It creates a different sonic environment. The sequence gradually strips everything away — first, the human voices become overwhelming, then they all vanish. The birds appear suddenly; then they too fade away. When the cycle repeats, the human voices are completely absent — just a wheat field rustling in the distance. Then, even the birds are gone, leaving only wind. It’s this gradual removal of everything.
GM: That’s astounding. Not to mention the speakers, which you can’t see at all. You really have no idea where the speakers are. Are they in a grid — a row around the room?
AS: Yeah, the speaker array is about five feet high and divided into three sections. Each section has four six-foot-long boxes, and each box contains 31 individual speakers. That’s 382 speakers total surrounding the space on three sides, all precisely timed to create Wave Field Synthesis. They start playing the same sound at slightly different moments, so the wave field propagates through the air, converges at exact points in the room, and focuses the sound there. We can move where that point is around the room in real-time. In the original version, you’d wear a tracking fob, and wherever you moved, the sound would follow you — the narrator’s voice always seemed to be right next to your ear, talking directly to you. You can say different things to different people. As an audience member, you’re hearing different things.
A row of directional speakers
GM: And what’s next? What are you working on?
AS: I have this amazing grant from the Doris Duke Foundation to keep developing these systems — particularly the volumetric displays and holographic sound systems that currently don’t exist in any rentable form. I had to build every component from scratch for this project, which was incredibly time-consuming. I want to create more intuitive ways for other artists to work with these technologies — lower the barrier to entry so we can have more people experimenting with these ideas.
I’m also premiering a new dance piece at Jacob’s Pillow in July 2025. I’m working with two other dancers to explore being together in the same physical space but not at the same moment in time. We’re using a grid of 24 DMX-controlled winches with light bulbs to create this interactive light sculpture that responds to the dancers’ movements in real time.
Additionally, I have a Lincoln Center residency where I’m creating this public performance that’s completely hidden in plain sight. Audience members arrive at a normal public plaza without instructions about where to look or what to expect. Gradually, they might notice subtle synchronizations — a tour group over here and a picnic group over there starting to sway in unison, and a FedEx guy’s packages emitting synchronized sounds. It builds to this Busby Berkeley-style coordinated dance number across the entire plaza before dissolving back into ordinary activity. We’re doing a small test version at the Open Studio on May 3.
NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS) was staged at the Rollins Theatre at The Long Center in Austin in guided and self-guided versions, as part of South by Southwest’s programming from March 9 through March 12.
