What grows in Brooklyn? A tree and a new theater

In this artist rendering released by Theatre for a New Audience, a drawing of the Theatre for a New Audience's 299-seat stage planned in the Brooklyn borough of New York, is shown. When opened in 2013, the $48-million theater will be the first new stage designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965 and it will be the first permanent home for the itinerant company. (AP Photo/Theatre for a New Audience)

Associated Press

January 31, 2012
by MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) – In a season where little grows in the Northeast, something in Brooklyn is doing just that, foot by foot.

The metal guts of what will be a sleek three-tiered glass box surrounding the Theatre for a New Audience’s 299-seat stage have gone up in a former parking lot as part of the city’s ambitious plan to create a new $650 million cultural district.

“It’s going to be a destination,” said Jeffrey Horowitz, the founding artistic director of the company, during a recent tour of the work site in the Fort Greene section of the borough.

When opened in 2013, the $48-million theater will represent a milestone for Theatre for a New Audience and the city: It will be the first new stage designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965, and it will be the first permanent home for the itinerant company.

“We need a place to gather our activities, to set down roots in a community,” said Horowitz, who founded the theater company in 1979. “Would you go to a doctor or a lawyer whose office kept changing?”

The construction site is one of several at city theaters this winter, including the building of Signature Theatre Company’s new $66 million Frank Gehry-designed home on 42nd Street, a $57 million renovation of New York City Center and a $41 million theater being built on the roof of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater.

In addition to a 299-seat theater, the 27,500-square-foot Theatre for a New Audience’s home will house a 50-seat rehearsal space and a lobby cafe. It will overlook a new public garden plaza and sit along a walking path between BAM’s Opera House and Harvey Theater.

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