Happenstance Theater

Happenstance Theater, founded in 2006, is a professional award-winning company committed to generating original visual and poetic theatre. It features multi-talented performers who craft all aspects of the pieces from concept to realization. The ensemble includes Artistic co-Directors Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, Gwen Grastorf, Sarah Olmsted Thomas and Alex Vernon. (Caleb Jaster joins for the performance of Barococo.) Developing and performing numerous works together since 2012, the players harvest imagery from the past and re-contextualize it in performances that address eternal themes of life, death, and the ephemeral. With the simplest means - movement, silence, theatrical clown, music, text, puppetry, physical comedy and beauty - Happenstance seeks to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. “Meaning is often discovered by happenstance.”