OUR MISSION
Visual Echo is a New York-based performance organization founded during the pandemic by a small collective of immigrant artists and educators. Rooted in our cross-cultural experiences, we create bold, participatory performances and educational programs that spark dialogue among people from different backgrounds. We believe in the transformative power of conversation to bridge cultural, social, and political divides—challenging assumptions, dismantling prejudice, and breaking down the barriers that divide us.
We use innovative performance- and art-based programs as catalysts for exchange around civic issues such as immigration, polarization, conflict, and peace building. We create spaces where multiple perspectives and productive disagreement are vital to the well-being of individuals and communities, and essential to our artistic and social success.
OUR IMPACT
Through visually striking performances, socially engaged art, and empowering educational programs, we create opportunities for individuals and communities to engage in meaningful dialogue, share stories, challenge assumptions, and build connections on a horizontal, human-to-human level.
OUR PROGRAMS
Visual Echo is committed to its founding mission through three interconnected programs: the production of original performances (VE Performance), the development of educational programs (VE Education) and the fostering of creative partnerships with community organizations (VE Community). Together, these programs invite diverse publics into dialogue, reflection, and action around the pressing issues of our time.
VE Performance is our platform for the creation and presentation of original, visually mesmerizing, politically charged live performances, that ignite public dialogue around urgent social issues.
Our productions are positioned at the intersection of groundbreaking theatricality and social activism, and are intended to inspire, empower, and awe the audience while fostering debate and encouraging a call for action.
Created through a rigorous laboratory process rooted in research, experimentation, and collaboration, our work emerges from deep engagement with the communities and artists we partner with. Drawing on devised and collaborative theater, interview-based storytelling, and visual dramaturgy, we craft layered, multimedia performances that push the boundaries of what theater can be—and who it can be for.
VE Education is our training platform for activating creativity, developing artistic skills, and cultivating storytelling as a tool for reflection, communication, and change. Designed for both artists and non-artists, our workshops, classes, lectures and other educational activities equip participants with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to tell their own stories and express their artistic creativity.
We offer custom-designed training programs for a wide range of participants and organizations, including artists, educational institutions, nonprofits, and corporate clients—adapting our methodology to meet each context’s unique needs.
Artists:
We support both professional and emerging artists through affordable training in Visual Echo’s collaborative performance-making practices. Our workshops focus on devised theater, visual dramaturgy, and interdisciplinary storytelling, offering a space for artists of all backgrounds, abilities, and disciplines to expand their creative vocabularies. Participants engage in cross-disciplinary exchange, contributing their unique perspectives to collective storytelling processes.
Schools:
We offer accessible and affordable hands-on programs for students of all ages that integrate theater, visual art, and storytelling. Our workshops foster imagination, critical thinking, empathy, and self-expression—especially in underserved public schools. Rooted in a learn-by-doing philosophy, our work helps students explore identity, values, and beliefs.
Nonprofits & Social Impact Partners
Distinct from our VE Community platform, this stream serves mission-aligned organizations—such as libraries, shelters, advocacy groups, and public agencies—seeking arts-based tools for engagement, dialogue, and healing. These training programs use our creative methods to support staff and constituents in storytelling, communication, and reflection.
Corporate Clients
Our arts-based training for corporate partners offers fresh approaches to team-building, communication, and problem-solving. Using storytelling, world building, spatial design, and collaborative mapping techniques, we help organizations surface insights, foster creativity, and prototype new ways of working together. These trainings help underwrite our free public programs.
VE Community is our civic dialogue and co-creation platform, using art to bring people together across cultural, social, and political divides. We collaborate with local and global partners to co-create performances, installations, and gatherings rooted in community concerns.
We ask: How can shared artistic experiences unite people who feel divided by everyday life? And how can Visual Echo help diverse communities connect across cultural and political lines?
Our focus is on listening, connecting, and amplifying community-led stories—especially those too often left out of public discourse.
OUR PROJECTS
Since its founding, Visual Echo has developed a portfolio of innovative projects that center storytelling, participation, and dialogue. These projects include Journey of a Dream, a cross-generational venture developed in collaboration with Peace Child International in commemoration of the UN’s 75th Anniversary, “МИС”Translation, an interactive installation delving into the artistic potential of verbal and artistic mismatches; and Bridging Conversations, a sound-mediated experience for two that offered participants a brief yet impactful opportunity to immerse themselves in someone else’s perspective.
In 2024, we launched our large-scale flagship initiative, SpaceBridge, a workshop program and live performance that brough together Russian refugee children, who fled to the US due to their families’ anti-war stance and now live in NYC shelters, with American peers to build lifelong friendships while coming to terms with their differences. The performance tracked immigrant children’s stories as they integrate into American society and wrestle with questions of heritage, collective responsibility, and guilt by association.
The project emerged from Visual Echo’s distinctive storytelling workshops, which bring together immigrant and non-immigrant youth. These workshops use art and performance-based tools to help participants share personal experiences, form meaningful connections, and imagine a world where their multicultural friendships are embraced and supported.
SpaceBridge was devised and performed by eleven young Russian refugees and eight American-born participants, all aged 10 to 15. It premiered in January 2025 at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, the legendary stage in the East Village, as part of the Under the Radar Festival. It is scheduled to tour to Boston’s Paramount Center in November of 2025.
In response to growing interest, we are now developing a national and international expansion of SpaceBridge. This includes partnering with local organizations to co-host residencies in new cities, bringing together refugee and local youth to co-create site-specific versions of the project rooted in their own communities. SpaceBridge is a catalyst for youth-led conversations around identity and belonging—conversations that are especially urgent amid the ongoing global refugee crisis.
Visual Echo is currently developing Notice to Appear, a new performance and immersive installation that attempts to capture the dysfunctional dynamics of asylum court hearings and critically examines the arbitrariness of U.S. asylum policy, which gives individual judges outsized discretion over whether asylum seekers stay or go.
Visual Echo was founded in the summer of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—a time when isolation, inequity, and uncertainty shook the foundations of daily life. The crisis exposed deep fractures in our global systems: structural racism, economic injustice, and political polarization. And yet, it also revealed a powerful longing for connection, care, and collective meaning.
We created Visual Echo in response to that moment of rupture and to address the needs of our times.
VE is not simply a theater company—it is a cross-disciplinary platform for civic imagination. We see ourselves as a small-scale civic institution: an engine for dialogue, empathy, and artistic activism.
We stand on the shoulders of the heroic first responders of COVID-19. As artists, we consider ourselves “next responders,” offering support to a fractured society in need of connection and healing—one individual at a time.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
At Visual Echo, we center the individual story—not the spectacle—in order to foster human-to-human connection. Whether through performance, education, or civic dialogue, our work is grounded in presence, curiosity, and care.
We follow the principle: “work small, think big” and “scale deep, not wide.” We design each project as a space for meaningful interaction, where people feel seen, heard, and challenged. We are less interested in reaching large numbers of people than in cultivating lasting impact—one room, one moment, one relationship at a time.
Visual Echo is a laboratory for creative experimentation. We are committed to pushing the boundaries of what performance can be—and to rejecting the idea that our outcomes must always be measurable. Our goal is not just artistic or educational success, but deeper: to nourish empathy, build trust, and help make the world more connected, more just, and more alive.
LEADERSHIP
Visual Echo was co-founded by Irina Kruzhilina, a New York–based theater director, scenographer, and educator with over two decades of experience creating interdisciplinary performances in both conventional and unconventional spaces. She continues to lead the organization as its Artistic Director, guiding its vision and creative direction.
Irina collaborates with a dynamic, rotating network of artists, educators, and community advisors who contribute their unique perspectives to each project. This approach reflects Visual Echo’s core values: cross-disciplinary collaboration, intercultural dialogue, and the creation of open spaces for complex, meaningful conversations.
OUR BOARD
Irina Kruzhilina (President)
Thijs Beuming (Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary)
Orlando Pabotoy
Jennifer Holmes