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GROWING TAKES TIME is playful grappling, immersive performance, and life lessons inside a life-sized video game—where the audience becomes the astronauts who power the world. |
Think: a queer arcade where tension is the teacher, play is the practice, and growth is how you win.
Guided by a cast of queer femme PIKMII, participants move through playground-inspired games, movement mirroring, collaborative missions, and playful grappling as they help the PIKMII navigate each level. As the PIKMII journey through conflict, repair, and cooperation, participants discover that communication, responsiveness, and collective care are what allow the group to level up.
Blending contemporary dance, jiu-jitsu-inspired partnering, immersive performance, and somatic play, Growing Takes Time transforms tension into choreography and play into practice. Rather than escaping conflict, audiences are invited to move through it together—discovering that whimsy, like growth, is something we cultivate collectively.
Guided by a cast of queer femme PIKMII, participants move through playground-inspired games, movement mirroring, collaborative missions, and playful grappling as they help the PIKMII navigate each level. As the PIKMII journey through conflict, repair, and cooperation, participants discover that communication, responsiveness, and collective care are what allow the group to level up.
Blending contemporary dance, jiu-jitsu-inspired partnering, immersive performance, and somatic play, Growing Takes Time transforms tension into choreography and play into practice. Rather than escaping conflict, audiences are invited to move through it together—discovering that whimsy, like growth, is something we cultivate collectively.
GAMES - GRAPPLES - GROWTH GRIT
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In 2026, Growing Takes Time transformed Noo Arts Wildflowers Rooftop into its largest immersive production to date. Fully supported by a NYSCA grant, the one-hour experience invited audiences to discover that whimsy isn't something we find—it's something we practice together.
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"Walking into Growing Takes Time, the space immediately feels alive with movement, sound, and a kind of structured play. There’s a balance between choreography and unpredictability where nothing feels fully fixed, but everything still feels intentional... What unfolds feels less like watching a performance and more like being inside a shared experiment in attention, trust, and cooperation"
-from Bleu Pablo with The Brooklyn Rail
"Growing Takes Time is wonderfully multidimensional... "This was one of the zaniest shows I’ve ever experienced. While we tackled serious ideas -- commitment, cooperation, and world-building-- the endeavor was filled with humor and fun... The play was both familiar enough for our comfort and novel enough to keep us intrigued and enthusiastic to work with total strangers to accomplish PIKMII goals." |
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The artists involved are highly-trained dancers and theater practitioners... I deeply enjoyed watching the performers. They fully embodied their characters and were intensely committed to their roles. The play was both familiar enough for our comfort and novel enough to keep us intrigued and enthusiastic to work with total strangers to accomplish PIKMII goals." 
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In 2025, Growing Takes Time received a $10,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), supporting the expansion of the project from four performers to ten. In 2026, that support culminated in the largest iteration of the work to date at Noo Arts Wildflower Rooftop.
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As a participant, it’s obvious that you need to stay on your toes and remain aware of not only the activities going on around you, but the potential for the spontaneous to just as rapidly appear. It eventually dawned on me that Growing Takes Time is our contemporary Happening / Fluxus event meets the childhood-inspired competitive games of the South Korean tv series Squid Game (but, thankfully, non-lethal and inherently fun)." |
In 2025, pre-funding, Growing Takes Time was presented by Karley Wasaff in collaboration with sponsors across iconic NYC venues, including Satellite Art Show, the headquarters of POSH.VIP, and Dixon Place.
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Was Growing Takes Time a totally bananas experience? Absolutely, which is what makes it such an incredible, one-of-a-kind, hyperreal, fever dream of an experience - and I would gladly do it all over again at a moment’s notice. Honestly, I am so grateful to that usher from the May performance for not letting me in because this is the type of performance art that you need to enter into from the start or else you’ll completely lose the plot (or not even know what it is from the outset). Even with this in-depth review that I composed, it really is impossible for me to spoil the event because, unlike a film or a book where the engagement is more passive, this requires active participation in order to fully appreciate the awesomeness of Wasaff’s surrealistically humorous, communally-centric performance art. And much like the teachings of Kaprow or Joseph Beuys, Growing Takes Time proves how anyone can become an artist, performer, or agent of change! |
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Press Releases & Critiques
2026
Impressions: Karley Wasaff's "Growing Takes Time" at Noo Arts' Wildflower Green Roof
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In Conversation: Karley Wasaff with Bleu Pablo
by Bleu Pablo with The Brooklyn Rail "Walking into Growing Takes Time, the space immediately feels alive with movement, sound, and a kind of structured play. There’s a balance between choreography and unpredictability where nothing feels fully fixed, but everything still feels intentional... What unfolds feels less like watching a performance and more like being inside a shared experiment in attention, trust, and cooperation"
Staff Picks No. 150
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2025
"Growing Takes Time" by Karley Wasaff - A Performative Playtime Extravaganza in SoHo
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Growing Takes Time Brings Playful World-building to POSH HQ
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Previous Partners and Sponsors
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