Savage Wonder / The Pulse of an Evolving American Myth

 Savage Wonder, Beacon NY, Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

By LARA PAN December 16th, 2025

Savage Wonder Art Center is a veteran-led nonprofit founded by Christopher Paul Meyer. Originally launched in 2021 as VetRep, the organization adopted its new name upon relocating to Beacon, signaling a broader and more ambitious mission. “Our mission is to invigorate the performing and visual arts and add to American culture through the work of veteran and first-responder artists – and their immediate family members,” Meyer explains.

But what do we truly mean when we speak of American culture? One could argue that there is no American culture without Americana, and no Americana without veterans. As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence next year, questions about what it means to be “American” take on renewed significance. At its best, American culture suggests a character that is fiercely independent yet deeply sociable, aspirational yet sentimental. It is a culture forged through courage, reinvention, and a collective belief in possibility.

Veterans have always been central to that narrative. Their experiences of service, displacement, resilience, and return are woven into the country’s artistic and cultural fabric. From folk traditions carried home from wartime to the images and stories that define American iconography, veterans have continually expanded the national imagination. Their voices and visions have shaped literature, photography, theater, music, and the visual arts, leaving an unmistakable imprint on the evolution of Americana. In this context, we look beyond race or color; we honor courage, creativity, and the belief that everyone stands equal, contributing bravely to a shared cultural legacy.

At a Savage Wonder opening, Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

Savage Wonder is dedicated to curating, developing, and producing work across the visual and performing arts by military and first-responder veterans, as well as their immediate family members. By amplifying these artists, the organization not only supports an underserved creative community but also illuminates how profoundly veterans contribute to America’s ongoing story—its myths, its memory, and its cultural identity.

A new wave of energy is now flowing through the Tribeca art scene, marked by the arrival of the dynamic Savage Wonder space on Franklin Street. At its helm is director Jeanne Freilich. Together with Meyer, her thoughtful vision and intuitive touch are shaping the location into a vibrant cultural hub for the city. Through its Tribeca presence, the organization brings renewed purpose and artistic commitment to New York’s cultural landscape—promising to grow, evolve, and inspire. It has quickly become a must-visit destination at 89 Franklin Street, New York, NY.

I am glad to have the opportunity to ask a few questions to Christopher Paul Meyer.

LP: How did everything begin, and what inspired the name Savage Wonder?

Christopher Paul Meyer:
Well, I come from three generations of theater folk—the arts were sort of my baseline normal. But I was at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and as the Global War on Terror heated up, that eventually led to me sort of running away from the arts to join the military. I say “sort of” because I never really left the arts. Writing and studying playwriting nonstop, and doing comedic improv in NYC and LA, were my lifelines to performance when I wasn’t deployed. And more than that, I always saw my military service as a continuation of my artistic life—a chance to gather experiences, stimuli, and inspiration. I didn’t know exactly how that would pay off creatively, but by the time I left Afghanistan in 2020, with the wars winding down, it felt like the moment to stop deploying and start building something. I had the idea for what I thought would be a veterans repertory theater.

When I demobilized from Afghanistan, we were quarantined for several weeks at a camp in New Mexico because COVID was still newly wreaking havoc. During that time, I started doing word-association lists—words that hinted at the kind of entity I wanted to build. The words Savage and Wonder kept popping up. They felt like the perfect intersection of the warrior and the artist. They felt expansive, like they could grow with us. But I shelved them for the moment and took the practical route, naming the entity Veterans Repertory Theater. I thought we’d be producing veteran-written plays and cultivating playwrights.

I knew I didn’t want to create a sentimental, veterans-only incubator. I wanted to deliver wildly entertaining content—period. And in the three years we spent searching for a permanent home, we had to keep creating. So we rented a small converted chiropractor’s office in Cornwall, New York—a 13-by-16 room that I shoehorned sixteen seats into—and that space became our laboratory. Every Saturday night, we brought in world-class performers—Broadway actors—and did highly staged readings for a pay-what-you-can ticket. We’d rehearse and block for five hours and put the show up that night.

What we discovered in that tiny room became our aesthetic foundation. Audiences loved the intimacy. They loved the quick flash-to-bang of seeing performers make decisions and discoveries right in front of them. And the absurdity of staging big ideas in a room the size of a walk-in closet became part of our DNA. Entrances through windows. Five-minute slow-motion fight scenes. Total insanity. And it worked. It taught us we could lean into intimacy, absurdity, whimsy, and surprise—the four pillars that now define our work.

Install view, Savage Wonder, Beaccon NY, Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

At the same time, I had gotten back on social media for the first time in over a decade, and I saw how lush and spread out the veteran artistic ecosystem really was—not just in theater, but in comedy, magic, circus, music, visual arts, everything. By the time we found our permanent home in Beacon three years later, it was glaringly obvious we were not going to be doing just theater.

Meanwhile, the name Veterans Repertory Theater was sending all the wrong signals. People assumed we were doing art therapy—we weren’t. They assumed we were telling war stories—we weren’t. They assumed we were just putting veterans on stage—we weren’t. It became obvious this very literal, two-dimensional name had outlived its usefulness. While the veteran experience is foundational to the creators, we platform, I wanted the public to focus on our output, not our input—on the art itself and the audience experience. And that’s the Savage Wonder we are building in Beacon.

LP: You’ve shared that you feel a strong pull toward the performing arts, presenting everything from circus to magic in Beacon. Is this programming shaped by a sense of nostalgia, or does it reflect a deeper aspect of your artistic vision?

Meyer:
A little bit of the former, a lot of the latter. Yes, I’ve got a genuine love for certain timeless corners of the performing arts. I grew up loving a whole spectrum of disciplines, and I’ve always had a soft spot for vaudeville and that old-school, slightly anarchic nostalgia baked into early performance traditions. That’s real.

But the thing that shapes our programming now is curiosity—this constant desire to play with form, to push things artistically, to look for better, more innovative, more exciting ways of presenting work. Sometimes that means building multidisciplinary pieces; sometimes it means immersive environments; sometimes it means crafting full experiences; and sometimes the most radical choice is doing something straight but sharper and more intentional than you normally see. We run the gamut: pure music shows, pure visual art installations, and work that mixes multiple disciplines. The through-line is that we never default to “that’s how everyone else does it.”

Guests at Savage Wonder, Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

Part of that drive comes from looking at the landscape theaters selling to 30% houses, fantastic performances failing to connect. People guard their leisure time fiercely; if they’re putting on pants and leaving the couch, it better be worth it.  We look for the choices, structural, aesthetic, conceptual that deliver fuck-yeah experiences. That’s the metric. That’s the compass.

And I love what that signals about who we are. It says we’re an aspirational organization shining a light down the tunnel for veterans who want a life in the arts. And that life doesn’t have to be linear or confined—it can be theater, visual arts, comedy, magic, circus, music, whatever medium speaks to them. Our mission is to prove that veterans can infiltrate all the media of live performance, not just the stereotypical ones.

So the spirit behind our programming really comes down to curiosity and ambition: constantly asking how we can make the work more alive, more inventive, more kinetic, more meaningful—not for the sake of novelty, but to give the audience something that genuinely competes with staying home. That’s how we chase fuck-yeah moments. That’s the real engine behind what we do.

Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

LP: How would you describe your curatorial approach? Do you make selections yourself, or is it a collaborative process with your team? Could you also expand on the residency program in Beacon and what you hope it will offer participating artists?

Meyer:
Yeah, I’m very hands-on when it comes to who we curate less so in the visual arts than in the performing arts—but it’s one of the areas I remain very precious about. I am blessed with a fantastic team. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sean Christian Taylor, Topher Kage, and, of course, the invaluable Jeannie Freilich as being incredibly important curators with me. Jeannie, obviously, I defer to far more on the visual arts. I still have my input, and she and I collaborate and consult with each other on every curatorial decision, but I trust her eye and her judgment. And on the performing side, having my production team—Topher and Sean—is a huge help as we curate acts. When you’re programming 30 to 45 performances a month across five or six different disciplines, it takes a team with good sensibilities to curate the right people.

Everything we curate, I’m looking for work that is intimate, absurd, whimsical, or surprising. Those are the four attributes we believe audiences respond to the most, and they’re also the four attributes the veteran community brings a tremendous amount of value to. So we’re always curious about acts, artists, writers that align with those sensibilities.

We do that within a margin of error, of course we have a lot of programming to fill but we’re blessed with getting so many submissions now that it’s slowly allowing us to be more and more selective and platform exactly who and what we want.

As for our resident artists, it’s a bit of a misnomer. They’re not usually geolocated with us. We bring them out for installations or workshops of their writing when the project calls for it. Becoming a resident artist with us means we have a contractual obligation with them because they have work, we’re invested in developing. And we’re adding to their professional portfolio, giving them proper credits, proper opportunities. Especially with our playwrights: we’re developing their work aggressively, getting them used to the process, getting them used to the collaborative nature of theater, and priming the pump with plays that are, let’s call it, turnkey-ready for when our mainstage is built, and we can properly platform them.

Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

LP: Can you tell me more about the idea behind the New York City pop-up space? How did it first come about, and how do you hope to bring the distinctive Beacon energy into this setting? I was especially thrilled to attend the reading of the Brat play last week. How did that event come together, and what does it represent within your broader vision for the NYC program?

Meyer:
I’m thrilled to say that our Tribeca pop-up space is going to be a little more permanent—we’ve decided to extend there for the near future. As a nonprofit, of course, contributed revenue is crucial for us—donations, grants, etc. But to build out the remaining 6,000 sq ft space in Beacon—the main floor of our converted 1929 bank featuring a sculpture space, a performance venue, a vaudeville stage, and a second bar inside beneath 53’ high ceilings,we need the earned revenue generated by the world-class art we’re showing, and there’s simply no better place to do that than Tribeca.

I’m also incredibly grateful for the feedback we’ve gotten that our Tribeca gallery feels unmistakably like us. People say it’s full of Beacon energy, which is exactly what we hoped whimsical, absurd, intimate, surprising work delivered with staff who embody that warm, low-maintenance-but-high-standards Hudson Valley approach. That’s our whole vibe, and it traveled well.

And being able to use our NYC footprint to put up the occasional theatrical offering in the gallery is an incredible opportunity. BRAT was a milestone for us—the first winner of our full-length playwriting competition in 2022. Bob Balaban and I have been working with the playwright, Jason Pizzarello, for almost three years now, developing the piece. Doing a reading of it in Tribeca let us introduce ourselves to more of the theater world, shake hands with new people, widen the circle.

LP: Which aspects of your diverse programs and initiatives would you most like to highlight for the White Hot Magazine audience, and why do you think they are important for viewers to experience?

Meyer:
Look, we are not a veteran organization that’s here to help veterans. We are veterans who are here to help the arts. And we do that by offering fuck-yeah experiences that are intimate, absurd, whimsical, and surprising. What that means, practically, is that when you show up at our space, we have knocked ourselves out to build an experience for you—whatever kind of experience you’re hunting for.

I haven’t even gotten into our food and beverage program yet, but that’s a major component of what we do at Savage Wonder. Jeremy Plyburn a Gramercy Tavern alum oversees all our hospitality, and he’s developed a globally conscious menu inspired by veterans’ overseas experiences. If you want a foodie experience, we’ve got you. You’re getting dishes, desserts, wines, and a full dinner menu you’re not going to find anywhere else.

And if you want the insane, whimsical, inventive art installations, we’ve got those. If you want multidisciplinary performances, unhinged staged readings, content you absolutely will not see elsewhere, we’ve got that too. We’re artistically ambitious. We platform veterans, yes, but we do not play it safe with any of our content. We’re constantly experimenting with form, cracking it open, and looking for better, wilder, more creative ways to deliver fuck-yeah moments to our audiences.

Courtesy of Savage Wonder Art Center

LP: Finally, how would you describe your vision for the ideal future of Savage Wonder?

Meyer:
Internally, our vision for Savage Wonder is to become the creative epicenter of veteran artists in the country. We want to be the hub the place where veteran creators across every discipline can come to grow, experiment, collaborate, get inspired, develop their work, and push themselves further than they thought possible.

Externally, we want to be the place where you never have to wonder what’s playing. Just go. Walk through the doors and know you’re going to have a fuck-yeah experience. Performances, installations, artwork, food, drink—any number of disciplines happening across multiple performance spaces, all inside one wild, alive, 12,000-square-foot building. That’s the bar we set for ourselves.

And the way we get there is through curiosity and play. We are relentlessly curious, which means we’re inherently playful. We poke at forms. We crack them open. We mess with structure, staging, pacing, space, the audience relationship—not recklessly, but playfully, creatively, with intention. One of the deadliest phrases in the military is “that’s how we’ve always done it,” and it’s staggering how often that mindset shows up in the art world. We’re experienced enough, ambitious enough, and naive enough to always ask “why?”

 We play. We experiment. We ask why something must look the way it’s looked for decades. We ask how it could be more kinetic, more inventive, more fun both for us as creators and for the audience experiencing it.

Everything we do is in service of creating the conditions that deliver fuck-yeah moments—moments that turn people on, light them up, and reward them for putting on pants and leaving the house. People don’t like to waste their leisure time. We must earn the night out.

The ideal future is simple:

Savage Wonder becomes the home base for veteran creativity on the inside, and the guaranteed fuck-yeah destination for audiences on the outside.