Garrett Allen is a performance based artist and director of live work. Their interdisciplinary practice employs liveness, embodied inquiry, and conceptual experimentation to produce impermanent, excavating, and synergistic experiences. Garrett engages with performance, theater, image making, installation, video, drawing, movement, and sound—cross-, inter-, and anti-disciplinary in approach.
Garrett has shown original work at with institutions including HERE Art Center, LaMama ETC, Center for Performance Research, Knockdown Center, Public Assistants, School of Visual Arts NYC, Alpha Space, Prelude Festival, Spectrum NYC, and The Invisible Dog. They have created and directed theater and live performances at the Brown/Trinity Rep, School of Drama at Yale, Ars Nova, Exponential Festival, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Laguardia Performing Arts Center, and University of the Arts Philadelphia. They have collaborated with playwrights Ife Olujobi, Nazareth Hassan, Brysen Boyd, Nkenna Akunna, Dante Green, Dominique Rider, and Kara Hadden. They have worked as assistant/associate director with Lileana Blain-Cruz, Sarah Benson, Bill Rauch, Carl Cofield, and David Mendizabál.
From 2020-2024, Garrett co-founded and co-led LEGACY: A Black Queer Production Collective alongside Arewà Basit, Kyle Carrero Lopez, and Ashton Muñiz.
Garrett was an inaugural New York Stage and Film Nexus Initiative recipient in 2021. They are currently a participant in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Art Center Residency Program.
Garrett received an M.F.A. in Directing from the School of Drama at Yale University and a B.A. in Neuroscience and Psychology with a minor in Theater, Dance, and Media from Harvard University.
They also make work under the moniker GARE.
upcoming:
April 17 2026: performance at Offerings
recent:
Feb 12 2025: CRASH CONSCIOUSNESS at Public Assistants
June 7 2025: performance as part of SQUIRTS! at LaMama
June 20 2025: “would you mind? could you? can I ask? is it possible?” at HERE
Sept 13 2025: performance with Scout Davis for CATCH 79
Nov 2025: Mother Courage and Her Children at Brown/Trinity MFA
Dec 11-13 2025: endlessend with Dominica Greene at Danspace Project
Jan 28+29 2026: down&out2 by Ife Olujobi with Exponential Festival
contact: garrettcarterallen(at)gmail(dot)com
Photo by Maria Baranova