Our Story
There it was. Just across Broadway from Lincoln Center.
A great big beautiful theater – deserted. One hundred worn velvet seats. A proscenium stage and dusty curtains. And when you shouted Hoo – an echo.
And here we were. In the same building, the West Side YMCA on 63rd Street. Two playwriting teachers at The Writer’s Voice. And our students. Talented students. With amazing new plays they’d been working on, very hard.
Charlie Schulman and I started doing readings in that beautiful deserted theatre. The Little Theater at the West Side Y where the very walls were redolent of greasepaint, drama and that unsung actor’s equity, sweat.
Then came the flood. Actors, directors, casting directors and producers, and many more writers, wanted to be part of us. Our Kickoff Event on Oct. 27th 2005 drew more than two hundred people – by word of mouth alone.
That fall and winter 2005, we staged readings of plays by our playwrights.
November 2005 we staged a full production of The Prophet of Borough Park by student Marshall Tarley.
December 2005, on the night of the worst blizzard of the year, we put up Bits and Pieces, an evening of monologues performed by eight of the city’s most amazing actors. The Little Theater was standing room only.
April 2006 we staged a concert performance of Charlie Schulman and Michael Robert’s new musical The Fartiste which went on to win Best Musical at the Fringe Festival 2006.
April, May and June 2006 we presented Beyond the Page – an 8-play reading series and awards ceremony, featuring plays by our community of playwrights including Anthony Roman, Paolo Tartamella, Richard MacDonald, Norman Rhodes, Stephanie Keys, Jo Ann Rosen, Larkin Maguire, Lea Fridman and Marshall Tarley.
We had become a community. We’d galvanized support from members of the Y and theater professionals. We were becoming a hub of new theatre and a home to actors, writers and directors. As an active arts organization, we were bringing people to the Y in droves. Plus, we were the only school in the city offering professional opportunities to its students as part of the curriculum.
But by the end of the summer 2006, we had been ushered out of the YMCA.
Our tiny office was converted to a supply closet. And the Little Theater itself was undergoing renovation to become what the new director of the Y wanted it to be – a commercial space that would answer to her #1 interest. Capital.
Three years in exile, and we have finally found a home. It is a new office just a little bigger than a supply closet. But we are free – no longer dependent on the whims of a corporate parent. In these years in exile, we have continued to build our community, develop plays and nurture playwrights, and present sold-out readings to the public.
We are the new Drama Center. Your creative center. Welcome.