I reached out to Annalisa Dias because I wanted to understand what happens when a four-letter .org domain becomes the front door for one of New York City's most respected arts institutions. HERE Arts Center has been operating out of Lower Manhattan since 1993, producing boundary-pushing work across theatre, dance, music, puppetry, and media. The New York Times once called it "one of the most unusual arts spaces in New York and possibly the model for the cutting-edge arts spaces of tomorrow." Work produced and presented at HERE has earned 16 OBIE awards, seven Tony nominations, two Pulitzer Prizes, and two MacArthur fellowships. In 2005, they purchased their long-time home at 145 Sixth Avenue and completed a full renovation through a $5 million campaign. The organization has supported over 14,000 artists and drawn close to a million audience members through its doors. They own Here.org. That alone makes this conversation worth having.
Annalisa is one of four co-directors who took over leadership in July 2024, alongside Jesse Cameron Alick, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller. They succeeded founding artistic director Kristin Marting, who stepped down after helping build HERE from scratch over three decades. Annalisa came to HERE from Baltimore Center Stage, where she spent five years as Director of Artistic Partnerships and Innovation. Before that, she was a producing playwright with The Welders in DC, co-founded the DC Coalition for Theatre and Social Justice, and co-founded Groundwater Arts, a collective focused on climate justice in the performing arts. She's a Goan-American transdisciplinary artist whose work spans playwriting, devised theatre, community organizing, and decolonization workshops. Her play 4380 Nights premiered at DC's Signature Theatre and landed on the 2017 Kilroys list. Her work has been produced across the US and UK, and has taken her to South Africa, India, Malawi, and Arctic Norway. She's not just running an arts organization. She's trying to change how the field operates.
Mike: Let's start with the domain. Here.org is a four-letter .org, clean, short, and memorable. Do you know the story behind how the organization acquired it, and do you think about the value of that domain as a digital asset?
Annalisa: I’m actually relatively new to the organization in terms of our thirty-two-year history, so the specifics of how HERE acquired the domain aren’t something I know. What I do know is that our founders were visionaries when the internet was still in its emergence, and the fact that we own “here.org” means we don’t just have a physical footprint at 145 Sixth Avenue; we have a primary stake in the digital landscape.
Mike: Your legal name is Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art Ltd, but the brand is HERE and the domain is Here.org. How important has that short, punchy name been to building awareness?
Annalisa: It’s vital. In a city as noisy as New York, brevity is a superpower. The word "HERE" is something of a philosophical statement… about presence, being in the room, and the ephemeral nature of live performance itself (you had to be here..!). When you tell someone "Go to Here.org," there’s no friction. It’s easy and memorable.
Mike: I noticed you also have HereArts.org and your social handles are @herearts. Was there ever a conversation about consolidating?
Annalisa: We use @herearts for social media mostly for clarity; "Here" is such a common word that the "Arts" suffix helps us stay searchable in a sea of hashtags. We’re always looking at how to streamline, but there’s also a benefit to having "Arts" in the handle: it contextualizes us immediately for someone scrolling while doing a million things.
Mike: HERE Technologies is a massive mapping company at Here.com. Has that ever caused confusion?
Annalisa: You’d think there might be, but honestly? Never. We operate in such different orbits that there’s really no overlap.
Mike: For a nonprofit with a $3.7 million budget, how much does your digital presence factor into fundraising and sales?
Annalisa: In a lot of ways, it’s our front lobby. For many of our donors and audiences, the first time they "walk through our doors" is via a browser. Here.org does the heavy lifting of establishing our credibility. If we had a clunky, long-winded URL, there might be a subconscious question about our relevance. The sleekness of the domain mirrors the professional rigor of the work we produce. It says we are established, we are permanent, and we are easy to find.
Mike: If HERE didn't own Here.org and was instead on HereArtsCenter.org, do you think that would meaningfully change things?
Annalisa: Subtly, yes. There is an inherent authority in a four-letter domain. It suggests you were there first. It moves us from being "an" arts center to being the place to be. In a competitive attention economy, those extra few syllables in a URL can feel like a hurdle. Here.org feels like a landmark; anything longer feels like a direction.
Mike: As someone stepping into leadership now, how are you thinking about the digital side differently than the founders might have?
Annalisa: The founders built a legendary "Home." My co-directors and I are thinking about the "Ecosystem." In 1993, a website was a digital brochure. In 2026, the website needs to be a porous border. I’m thinking about how digital space can support our climate justice goals—can we reach people without the carbon footprint of a flight? How can the digital "Here" support the physical "Here"?
Mike: Your play 4380 Nights deals with heavy subjects like Guantanamo Bay. How do you approach that without alienating an audience?
Annalisa: By leading with radical hospitality and even a little humor. You can’t throw a heavy truth at someone and expect them to catch it if they don’t feel safe in the room or if they feel like they’re being lectured to. I often use live performance to create a container for conversations about the world we all inhabit together. If we do our job right, the audience isn't "alienated," they’re activated.
Mike: Do you see Here.org as a ticketing hub, or is there a bigger vision?
Annalisa: Oh, it’s much bigger. I see it becoming a living archive and a platform for transdisciplinary experiments that might never touch a physical stage. We want it to be a site of resource-sharing for artists who are trying to decolonize their own practices. I want Here.org to be a place where the "Here" is global.
Mike: If someone has never heard of HERE and is visiting New York, what would you tell them to convince them to walk through the door?
Annalisa: I’d tell them that if they want to see what New York will look like ten years from now, they need to be here today. Most of what you see on Broadway or in major museums started in a basement or a small black box like ours. If you want the raw, unpolished, brilliant heartbeat of this city… it’s happening right here.