company biography

the after-image is a NYC-based movement-theater company creating original theatrical productions and interactive installations. Inspired by texts and artifacts that accentuate the cracks and possibilities in our system, the after-image welds what has been with what could be, bringing unexpected stories to life as an act of resistance.

We devise each production collaboratively from start to finish, so that ultimately we make theater that none of us could have envisioned alone. A leadership team conceives, guides, and makes final decisions about a given project, while each participating artist’s contributions shift and sharpen where, how, and why the project evolves as it does. We intend for this process to determine and be reflected in the theater that we make. Simultaneously, we cast the audience as each work’s final and most integral collaborators. And always, always our values guide our praxis. 

A 2025 SU-CASA artist, the after-image is leading theater-devising workshops with elders at the ARC XVI Fort Washington Center from April - June. Previously, the after-image was a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at the Movement Lab at Barnard College, where we presented Let’s Exorcise! A Community Catharty Party and Flow Up! The Catharty Quest Continues, the latter of which we developed with 3 courses of Barnard students.

Amy Shoshana Blumberg and Kate St. John founded the after-image in 2019, after co-creating he called it cymbeline during their Masters of Fine Arts program. Under Kate and Amy’s leadership the after-image developed and produced RE: SHE a litany of adventures (Philadelphia Fringe Festival, 2019), HOUSE OF AMERICAN ACTIVITIES (Theater for the New City, 2022), and the workshop and premiere of Let’s Exorcise! A Community Catharty Party (Caveat, 2023). Zahydé Pietri joined Kate and Amy as co-leader to remount Let’s Exorcise! and premiere Flow Up! at Barnard College in Spring 2024. Amy and Zahydé are the current co-leaders of the after-image.