The Palace Theatre (Photo by Howard Sherman)

Early last week, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee gave its blessing to a plan to elevate Broadway’s famed Palace Theatre by 29ft in order to make way for street-level and below-ground retail in the heart of Times Square and to redevelop the hotel that already rises above the venue.

There are still several hurdles for the plan to clear before it’s a completely done deal, but a timetable setting out the project’s completion by the end of 2019 was also announced, in a report that first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

The Palace is a fabled location, less as a legitimate theatre venue than for its origins as a premier vaudeville house. To ‘play the Palace’ means to have truly arrived in showbusiness terms.

Judy Garland famously performed there multiple times in the 1950s and 1960s, as did other name performers such as Danny Kaye and Jerry Lewis. Since it was bought by the Nederlander Organization in 1965, the Palace has been home to such theatrical hits as the original productions of Sweet Charity, Applause, La Cage aux Folles, The Will Rogers Follies and the current production of An American in Paris.

Like any theatre, it has also had its share of flops, including the musical Cyrano, a version of Frankenstein that I loved as a teen, and (amusingly) both Henry, Sweet Henry and Home Sweet Homer.

It’s important to note that while the interior of the Palace is landmarked, and therefore must be preserved, the exterior is not. Giant signage adorns the outside. Because the theatre is accessed via a lengthy entryway, its street-level frontage on Seventh Avenue is quite limited, sandwiched between the hotel entry on one side and a change bureau and a McDonalds on the other.

Opposition to the plan, citing the Palace’s historic and iconic status, remains, and it will likely grow louder as the final regulatory steps are taken. While I certainly want to see the theatre preserved, and by regulation it must be, I’m not joining the chorus of those who oppose the venue’s potentially elevated status.

This is because the project – driven first and foremost by commerce, I know – has the potential to rethink aspects of the theatregoing experience for the next century.

As Broadway theatres have begun to pass the 100-year mark, it’s impossible not to wonder how these tourist draws will fare over the long term. As ticket prices continue to rise and make Broadway into an increasingly luxury brand, the beloved but antique interiors may seem increasingly problematic to patrons: steep staircases, small lobbies and tight bathrooms come quickly to mind. This holds true for backstage as well, since the theatres weren’t conceived with modern technology in mind.

The Palace project has the potential to alleviate some of the front-of-house frustrations and make the Broadway theatregoing experience more consistent with that one might find at venues less than half its age. With new venues such as the Culture Shed, the performance spaces at Pier 55 and, maybe one day, the Ground Zero Arts centre on the horizon in New York, the patron experience on Broadway may stand in even sharper relief. Those of us who love the connection to days of theatre past may be willing to overlook some of the inconveniences that come with historic venues, but one cannot help but wonder about subsequent generations, and theatres shouldn’t become deterrents to seeing productions.

The Palace plans outline significant new space for audience and pre-show events, more akin to one what might find at newly built regional houses, as well as more support space backstage. I trust there will be new bathrooms. While great care must be taken with the jacking-up of the theatre, there is also a significant photographic record to guide replication should any pieces be inadvertently damaged in the process.

While exterior landmarking and past air-rights sales will likely prevent the same process from occurring at many other Broadway houses, the Palace may yet prove itself to be a new model of retaining the very best of our historic theatres while adapting to a newer era of entertainment and audience expectation.

There is risk, to be sure, but there’s also potential. If the view of the stage from my seat remains unchanged whether I’m at street level (in the stalls) or 29ft above it, if the beauty of the hall is preserved, then the lifting of the Palace isn’t going to get much of a rise out of me.

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

An artist’s impression of how the new St Ann’s Warehouse venue will look after its October opening

When the latest incarnation of St Ann’s Warehouse opens in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge in New York, a theatre that already has a reputation of staging cutting edge UK plays will be in prime position to attract new audiences. Howard Sherman meets its leading lights

There has long been a reciprocity between Broadway and the West End, dating back perhaps a century, with shows and artists travelling back and forth with regularity and acclaim.

For a steady diet of many of the UK’s most acclaimed companies and artists, New Yorkers can turn not only to Times Square but also to an area of Brooklyn called Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). This is where St Ann’s Warehouse has been a leader not only in presenting provocative, inventive and often thrilling work from the UK, as well as from across Europe, South Africa and Asia, but also at the forefront of the reclamation of an industrial neighbourhood as a community asset.

A wide variety of UK work has played at St Ann’s in recent years, including Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter, The Red Shoes, The Wild Bride and Tristan and Yseult, the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, several pieces by Daniel Kitson and now Let the Right One In.

Founded by Susan Feldman as Arts at St Ann’s in 1980, the company began with a dual purpose: establishing a creative centre for its Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood while also working to rehabilitate and preserve the historic church building that served as its home. In those days, the company was focused on shortrun concerts and musical events, but its move into the rough and tumble Dumbo neighbourhood in 2001 brought very different opportunities and challenges. From October, it begins work in its fourth venue when it moves into the former Tobacco Warehouse, a short distance from its current interim space, which has been in use since 2012.

Susan Feldman and Andrew Hamingson (Photo by Howard Sherman)

Recalling the early years at the church, Feldman explains how it “lent itself to music and fantastic spectacle”. But, in a move to a Water Street warehouse that was supposed to provide a home for only nine months but lasted for 12 years, theatre moved to the forefront of the programming, somewhat unexpectedly.

“We didn’t build a theatre,” Feldman says. “We used what was there, which was a very interesting grid, plus it had heat, electricity and an alarm system. We just built these temporary structures, so we could be flexible and move the space around. We kept that as we moved from place to place, so that temporary vibe and state of being became permanent.”

With the new building, the company’s executive director, Andrew Hamingson, speaks about only two “revolutionary” changes in store: “For the first time in St Ann’s history, there will be air conditioning, which means we can programme year-round if we want to. The second is a permanent dressing room.”

Hamingson also cites the opportunity for the offices and the theatre to be all under one roof and the increased potential of reaching out to even broader audiences, because the new venue is in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which he says draws 120,000 people each weekend.

While Feldman says St Ann’s audiences have been pretty much split between Manhattan and Brooklyn residents, she and Hamingson say the balance is shifting towards the continually gentrifying Brooklyn. Hamingson notes that they do not have the kind of tourist audience that one finds in Manhattan, but there is a serious international audience that makes its way to Brooklyn. Feldman attributes that to greater awareness of the neighbourhood itself – and to the success of Black Watch in its first of three visits, in 2007, which she calls a “crucial turning point”.

National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch

“Black Watch was a very special case,” she says. “There was a big New York Times story about how audiences didn’t want to talk about the war in Afghanistan. Then we did Black Watch and we found people absolutely did want to know about the war. The emotional responses of the audience and the press were so huge that it was more than just a cultural phenomenon. There was a need to wrap your arms around people and that’s what this play was doing and inviting.”

NTS’s executive producer Neil Murray says the show’s run at St Ann’s was significant for NTS as well. “The original run of Black Watch at St Ann’s and Ben Brantley’s New York Times review have been a huge driver not just for that show, but the company’s success in the US. While we have subsequently brought something like another seven shows to the US, including the 2015 runs of Let the Right One In and Dunsinane, that initial Black Watch run was a big springboard.”

The process of bringing a foreign show to the US puts St Ann’s in the position of being a presenter, but also a producing partner. “You can take a show from Europe and it really has to adapt to come over, it has to adapt to come into our space,” says Feldman.

Citing shows like Brief Encounter and Misterman, she speaks of having to shrink the productions. “Recapitalisation has to happen, so that becomes very much like producing. We have to raise money together to close the gap between the presentation costs and the box office. There’s always a period of risk assessment that we go through because we don’t have a single budget every year. We have to develop funding that’s going to go for each project and we put that together the way a producer would for every single presentation.”

St Ann’s does not typically participate financially in the future lives of productions it brings to the US, only doing so in cases where it has commissioned and plans to premiere the work.

Tristan Sturrock in Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter

Kneehigh’s executive producer Paul Crewe says he enjoys Feldman’s risk taking approach, and describes the connection between the companies as one that is “based on the work and a mutual respect”. He adds: “For Kneehigh, St Ann’s was a shop window into the US, because other programmers would often see the work. St Ann’s is one of the reasons we have had opportunities to play other cities and venues in America.”

As for how she finds work, Feldman says she visits three or four festivals each summer and makes trips to London regularly. She says that she also gets recommendations from others in the field.

Hamingson and Feldman say that bringing international work to the US has got harder. There used to be a lot more government funding for cultural exchanges, says Hamingson, adding: “Those pools, because of the downturn, have closed up a bit, so we’ve had to find other partners to take smaller pieces and do more of the fundraising on our own.”

“In fact, we are concerned,” says Feldman, “because there’s a lot of talk in Europe about how they’re going to follow the US model. When they say things like that they mean they’re going to start with philanthropy, but what they’re missing, the one reason that so many people go to Europe to see work is because of the core support that European companies get in their towns and in their cities.

“That support sustains the development of work on a regular basis. If it goes away, because they want to go on the US model, there is going to be an even worse drying up of original work. To me, it’s not a great sign. On the other hand, for European companies to be able to make use of philanthropy, and the desire of patrons to support, is a good thing for sure.”

As for the distinction between Brooklyn and Manhattan, neither Crewe nor Murray place much emphasis on it back home. “People in the UK are certainly aware of St Ann’s particular kind of programming,” says Murray. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that companies we really admire, like Kneehigh and Druid, are also frequent visitors there. I’m not sure a Scottish audience makes that distinction between Manhattan and Brooklyn, but in deference to Susan Feldman, we are always very careful to differentiate.”

“We have had, and continue to have, an interest in Manhattan,” says Crewe. “But the fact that St Ann’s is slightly outside the Broadway and Off-Broadway aesthetic gives us a sense of being part of a maverick world – an outsider that is a little rebellious. This fits well with us.” St Ann’s move into the new Tobacco Warehouse facility this year will be followed by the openings of several new performing arts venues, including the Ground Zero Arts Center, the Culture Shed, and Pier55. So is Feldman concerned about market saturation? Not really: “You know, the more culture there is, the more culture there is.

“What’s really going to determine what goes into those buildings as well as what goes into our building is going to be the financial relationships of whatever’s going in there. They’re not going to be the Metropolitan Opera suddenly that’s got an unlimited budget to make art. Five spaces the size of St Ann’s, which is what the Shed is supposed to be? I don’t know. But they’re talking about Fashion Week, they’re not talking about Mark Rylance and Measure for Measure. Some people say we’re all competing for the same money and it’s going to be a very competitive. I don’t think we’ve ever competed on that level, so I’m not sure. We’ve always been a niche.”

*   *   *

5 things you need to know about St Ann’s

* Founded 1980 in a historic landmark church by the New York Landmarks Conservancy to provide a complementary public use for the building and to preserve the first stained glass windows made in America.

* It has never had a permanent home. This will only come with the opening at the Tobacco Warehouse in October 2015.

* St Ann’s Warehouse has been the New York base and often national launching point for multiple theatre pieces by the National Theatre

of Scotland (Black Watch and Let the Right One In); Enda Walsh (four productions including Misterman); Kneehigh (four productions including Brief Encounter and The Wild Bride; and Daniel Kitson (including the world premiere of Analog.ue), among others.

* St Ann’s activated the first warehouse at 38 Water Street in DUMBO in November 2001, one month after 9/11, with a sold-out concert hosted by Martin Scorsese.

* American rockers who have also found an artistic home at St Ann’s include Lou Reed and Jeff Buckley.

*   *   *

This article reflects British spelling and the copyediting style of The Stage, where it first appeared.

It is unquestionably a sign of his achievements at The Young Vic that David Lan has been named consulting artistic director for the planned arts centre at the site of the former World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

Selection to be a part of this important element in rebuilding Ground Zero, the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks, was also a mark of achievement for, among others, Signature Theatre Company, architect Frank Gehry, and The Joyce Theatre.

But in the ensuing 10 years, the Signature abandoned its for Ground Zero and successfully built and opened a three-theatre complex on West 42^nd Street. Gehry’s involvement going forward is in limbo. The Joyce, a home to numerous dance companies, still hopes for a role in programming the arts center, but has seen plans for the largest theatre among the three still under discussion drop from 1,000 seats to 550, only slightly larger than their longtime home. In the scheme of New York theatres, the city’s relative paucity of 1,000 seat venues other than on Broadway might have been more useful to the ecology of the arts.

Mayor Bloomberg, whose administration was involved in discussions for the redevelopment plans over his 12 year tenure, is out of office now. Before leaving, he allocated $50 million in city funds to a rival new arts facility, the Culture Shed, but none for the Ground Zero project. The city’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, has yet to appoint a cultural affairs commissioner and is quiet on the project.

Even Mr. Lan’s participation seems somewhat fleeting, in that his appointment is only through September and he has told The New York Times that he does not foresee a programming role for himself. Maggie Boepple, president of the arts center’s seven member board (Stephen Daldry was recently named to the group) told the Times that there was no need for full-time artistic leadership because performances won’t begin until 2018 or 2019. What creative influence will Lan’s temporary engagement have in the next six months?

When the arts centre concept was first announced, the talk was heartening. The city committed to the idea that the arts had both a spiritual and economic role to play in healing lower Manhattan. Over time, the importance of that message has eroded.

Given the planning, emotional and political implications that surround the rebuilding of Ground Zero, it’s difficult not to be sceptical. The Wall Street Journal cites a daunting cost of $469 million, with only $155 million allocated by the federal government. Fundamentally, the Ground Zero Arts Center is a real estate project first and an arts project second, and that often places impractical burdens on creative work. Even during his limited engagement, I hope Mr. Lan can talk frankly and practically, challenging all existing presumptions, if the project is to ever succeed.

When theatre professionals turn catty about work they’ve seen and disliked, they arrogantly and foolishly compare it to the work of amdram troupes (who are deserving of appreciation, not derision). But when they really want to draw a condescending laugh out of their peers, they invoke the institution of dinner theatre, imagining diners noisily chewing their way through shows. Who remembers the parody in the film Soapdish, which had Kevin Kline performing Death of a Salesman amid clattering tableware?

While dinner theatre may never garner respect under that name, the genuine merging of food and theatre is making inroads in the US at scales both grand and intimate. And in doing so, it fulfills two popular concepts that are much discussed in the arts these days – engagement and immersion.

In the past few weeks, I’ve experienced the spectrum of theatrical dining: a homely table laden with both store-bought and homemade desserts to accompany the faux village ceremony at the heart of Dog and Pony Theatre Company’s Beertown (a Washington DC import at NYC’s 59 E 59 Theatre). Then there was a Russian sampler at Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet (at a tent in Times Square’s theatre district). At Queen of the Night (in the long-empty subterranean Diamond Horseshoe nightclub) there was a complete banquet with speciality cocktails and heaping platters of lobsters and beef. In each case, the food was completely integral to the show, rather than adjunct; this wasn’t just a quick bite during a lunchtime play or, God forbid, meatloaf juxtaposed with Miller.

What could be more immersive than eating? How can one possibly remain at a detached distance while sharing a table with other audience members, or when you’re exhorted to pile up a plate of goodies before taking your seat? Communal dining breaks down one’s reserve – even more so when alcohol is part of the repast. At Great Comet, selling drinks is not only a part of the experience, it’s part of the economic structure of the production; while a drunk audience might get out of hand at the sensual Queen. There’s even a theatre company named Three-Day Hangover that specialises in producing Shakespeare in bars, not simply in rooms above the pub, and encourages consumption via drinking games, just the thing for the much-desired “next generation of theatregoers,” provided they’re not abstainers.

Considering that “dinner and a show” is part of the lexicon for many arts attendees, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the two might be wrapped up in a single experience – and ticket. Going back to the 1980s, Tamara The Living Movie, a long-running hit in Los Angeles (with a briefer New York stay) fed audiences members rather lavishly at intermission, a respite from chasing actors playing out multiple storylines across myriad rooms years before Punchdrunk. Today, Sleep No More may not have fully integrated drinking and dining with its mashup of Hitchcock and Shakespeare, but bars and a restaurant echoing the design of the show share space at the retrofitted McKittrick Hotel in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood.

This is not to suggest that every show can be made immersive by adding a meal. The much-discussed clafoutis in God of Carnage would prove a messy distraction if passed out to each and every audience member, and it’s quite possible that a good show could be brought down by mediocre food. Even theatres that have dining rooms wholly separate from their performances have learned the pitfalls of becoming restaurateurs, as the art and business requires a different skill set from that needed for the stage.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that of the examples here, none have been produced in spaces purpose-built as theatres; finding such spaces in New York or London places an added production challenge on any show.

We seek to lure audiences away from their satellite TV, their Netflix subscription and their video games, on ever-larger TVs, all of which they can enjoy over take-out food or with sustenance they prepare. Perhaps looking at theatre as a package deal rather than an a la carte offering can make sense, engaging not only minds but mouths.

Tommy Bazarian in “Still Life.” (Photo courtesy Yuvika Tolani).

Someone bathing on stage? Commonplace. Two people bathing together on stage? Seen it. Male and female conjoined twins spending almost the complete duration of an hour-long Bulgarian play in bathtub? For that, I needed to go to the Fringe.

Inanimate objects coming to life and talking? Oh, that’s so Toy Story. Two grapes discussing life for 80 minutes? Yup, that’s the Fringe.

I didn’t choose to see these plays. As a Connecticut native, raised on a diet of regional theatre, Broadway and the major Off-Broadway companies, I don’t usually spend a whole lot of time below Union Square. Coming out of college, my drama club friends became doctors and lawyers, so I was never compelled to see productions in fifth-floor downtown Manhattan lofts. Having only moved here a decade ago at age 40 to run the American Theatre Wing, which required me to see every show that opened on Broadway, I’m pretty mainstream by default. But for three days in August, I dove into the New York International Fringe Festival, letting an unknown person fill my days with the kind of theater I would never have selected for myself. What manner of lunatic am I? Let me explain.

As diverse as anyone manages to make their entertainment choices, they are ultimately part of a self-fulfilling plan. Whether it’s a play, a movie, a book or a TV show, our cultural choices are, for the most part, self-curated experiences that align with our existing interests. Only the truly adventurous will opt for an experience about which they know nothing or, even worse, strikes them as unappealing, especially if they have to pay for it. We don’t accidentally find ourselves at Mamma Mia! if we hate musicals, or a football game if we loathe sports.

Even though I see perhaps 125 theatre productions a year, attend about 50 movies in theaters and watch far too much television, I’m still not as omnivorous as the casual (or non-) theatergoer might perceive me to be. It may be hard to perceive limitations in the guy who enjoyed Fast and Furious 6 and is also the aesthete who reveled in the eight-hour marathon “Great Gatsby” adaptation Gatz, but I know my biases and where I prefer not to go. In the cultural arena, even if one is an avid consumer (since my teens) and a professional (since the age of 21) all at once, it’s easy to block out entire swaths of experience, pop and high culture alike. I wanted to get past that, to see if I could still expand my own repertoire.

Presenting some 185 productions in a span of a little more than two weeks, the New York Fringe, with its youthful irreverence, bare bones and anything-goes ethos, struck me as the perfect petri dish in which to conduct an experiment. Like any mad scientist, I made myself the test subject. What would be the effect of an eclectic, perhaps unpolished, theatrical barrage on the psyche of someone with such an establishment history? What would it be like to be subjected to a highly compressed theatergoing binge without any choice in what I would attend? Other than offering up 72 consecutive hours to Narratively and urging my editor (who I know only by Twitter, e-mail and a single phone conversation) to pack the schedule so long as I got time to eat, I committed to three days at the Fringe, taking in whatever I was directed to see, informed of my schedule each morning with minimal time to form advance notions. I know that my four or five shows a day for three days pales compared to die-hards who spend a week in Edinburgh taking in six or seven shows daily, but even this more measured pace struck my friends and my wife as going off the deep end. I had no idea what I’d think when I came out the other side.

And I’m off!

Day 1

My assigned agenda was waiting in my e-mail inbox when I awoke the first morning. It felt a bit like I was Jim Phelps (or Ethan Hunt, for the youngsters) on Mission: Impossible, getting my brief to topple a fictional Latin American dictatorship. Having paid no attention to literature about the Fringe in order to avoid preconceptions, I was a bit disappointed when all of the shows for the day turned out to be in theatres that I knew (although, in the case of The Players Theatre on MacDougal Street, I’d never been inside). Mild adventure at best.

My first show, about a would-be celebrity chef whose absurd concoctions had failed to catch the palate of television executives, began at two p.m. On a Wednesday. Oh, dear god: I’m a matinee lady. Here I thought I was breaking new ground and I start by making myself a cliché. But once I got over my panic, I noticed that the audience was in fact mostly younger than me – this held true at all but two shows. So even though I was a relatively senior patron, I was, comfortingly, at an experience sought out by those ostensibly hipper than myself, albeit theatre geeks like me. I kept waiting for food be thrown into the audience by the increasingly manic chef, wondering whether the front rows might at any moment be showered with diced vegetables, as if at a Gallagher gig. Alas, the premise stayed with self-flagellation for the solo show rather than audience assault.

An hour later, I’m back out into the sunshine. With more than 90 minutes to go until my next show, I check e-mails, tweet, return a couple of calls. But trying to avoid snacking and not being a coffee drinker, I simply have time to kill. My greatest concern in this first break, which is already longer than my time in the theatre so far? Would my phone battery hold out until I get home at midnight. Not unlike the experience of a long wait at an airport, I learn that finding an open power outlet at the Fringe is a beautiful thing.

Next show: a “version” of Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints In Three Acts. I’m pretty sure I saw Four Saints once. I lived in Hartford, Connecticut for a decade, where the 1934 premiere of Stein’s piece took place, and is still referenced as a cultural touchstone when the city is accused of being straight-laced. That I can’t clearly remember the production I saw in Hartford suggests this is going to be a slog.

Daniel Bellomy, Jacob Vine, Jordan Phillips, Mitch Marois,Jimmy Nicholas, Joe Ventricelli and Carter Redwood in “Gertrude Stein SAINTS!” (Photo courtesy Jordan Harrison).

Within 15 minutes of lights up, I’m grabbing for my program, because this sure isn’t anything I remember. This cast looks so young. Who on earth are they? Who put this together? After about four bios I discover a common thread: I’m watching a show featuring undergraduates from Carnegie Mellon University. And while the word’s are Gertrude’s, these kids developed the almost completely a capella score themselves, under the direction of a CMU grad student. Loath as I am to play critic (and it’s not the purpose of my Fringe binge), before it’s half over I’m ready to buy the CD (yes, yes, I know—or download it from iTunes).

Dinner. I wolf down a piece of lasagna across the street, then back into the same theatre (La Mama) for the next show, then a quick sprint across the Village for the final show of the evening. Of these, one is amateurish but well-meaning, the other cynical and tasteless. The only noteworthy moment? During one of these shows, I see the first instance (of what would eventually become four) of simulated or mimed masturbation. Yes, it will become a mini-motif over three days. I don’t realize it right away, but collectively, they add up. Does this say something about the state of our culture? Is the motif a metaphor? Is this being taught in drama schools? I shudder at the possibilities. And I won’t even go into the implications of the show in which a character rhetorically asks to be rectally assaulted with an array of increasingly uncomfortable objects.

When I get home I give my wife the briefest of recaps, as she’s already in bed and halfway to sleep. I’m feeling a bit down, wondering whether I was taking the work on its own terms, something I always advocate, or holding it to the standard of my more conventional theatergoing fare. Have my perception and taste calcified with age and experience, or did I just see a few misfires? I haven’t spent much time in 99-seat, 60-seat, 30-seat theatres. I have to make significant perceptual adjustments for the Fringe, not because I had to make allowances for their constraints, but because I haven’t fully learned to appreciate work that may be truly new, extremely youthful, and made with the barest bones.

Day 2

Time looms before me. Despite one good experience, I do not relish two more days if the ratio of “wins” to “losses” holds at the same rate. Just to add to the fun, a small medical procedure I need to have done is unexpectedly moved up from the following week to this morning. And the day’s roster requires me to consult both subway and street maps.

Confession: I’ve never been on the Lower East Side. I’ve made occasional excursions to East 4th Street (for New York Theatre Workshop and La Mama, where I’d been yesterday), to Lafayette Street (The Public) and to The Flea Theatre in TriBeCa. But in each case, I’ve taken the subway, popping up out of the ground like some cultured gopher, harvesting my treats and jumping back into the hole.

So when I emerge on Delancey Street, I am disoriented. I have to use both the map in the subway station and Google maps to determine where I am and where I’m going. I feel like a tourist. Ten years in New York, but this is terra incognita. At one point, on East Houston Street, I happen to look to my right. Huh, there’s one of those bridges to Brooklyn. I don’t even know which one. Idiot.

I’m early, of course, a congenital habit. I have close to two hours before my first show. Then inspiration hits: I’m now near all of those restaurants I read about in New York magazine (to which I’ve subscribed for decades) but never eat at. Bigger inspiration: isn’t the fabled Shopsins around here somewhere? Carefully and repeatedly consulting Yelp and Google, I find it’s inside the very building I’m in front of. After almost being thrown out by the legendary Kenny S. for having the temerity to ask if I can plug in my phone anywhere, I eat, my choice somewhat limited by my commitment to not give in to mac and cheese pancakes, which seem to be part of every third item.

I have time after lunch, so I wander the streets a bit. Here’s chi-chi WD-40, here’s Katz’s Deli, here’s Russ & Daughters. The Zagat Guide sprung to life. I briefly indulge in a fantasy of my grandparents as immigrants to the U.S., living in these tenement buildings almost a century ago, like characters in a Delmore Schwartz novel. Though I have to admit to myself that I know little of their early lives, or when they’d moved up to Connecticut. With my parents gone, I never will know. If I have heritage here, it’s lost to me.

The first show is at a basement theatre called The Celebration of Whimsy. Reinforcing the tenet embodied in the space’s name, it is also known as the C.O.W. I see a show in which two clowns, squatting in an abandoned home, are confronted by weapons-wielding home invader clowns, in a place called The Cow. This hits a particular chord of mirth for me. Is this what it was like to go to Off-Off-Broadway 50 years ago? Was it this wacky?

Another break. I quickly learn that there aren’t spots to just hang around on the Lower East Side during the day, or at least I can’t find any (I would later discover copious places in the evening, but they’re bars and I don’t drink, plus they’re exceptionally loud). Fortunately, as I trek back to East 4th Street, I pass Fringe Central. Power outlets! I tweet my delight, which results in Elena Holy, who runs the Fringe, emerging out of seeming nowhere to greet me with a hug (we first met when I interviewed her for a podcast back in 2004). Recharged electrically and emotionally, I’m off again.

The next play, about a group of aimless teens (one of whom just happens to be a Satanist) has a really terrific first act (I’m reminded of Eric Bogosian’s Suburbia), and it’s a fully shaped play, not an hour-long sketch. Unfortunately it is let down by its perfunctory second act. I recognize the playwright from her Twitter feed and her acting roles sitting in the row behind me; I have this desperate urge to chat with her about her play. But that’s presumptuous. I don’t know her, I’ve never held an artistic position in the theatre, I’m not a critic. So I remain anonymous, but make a note to see her work in the future. Boy, I wish I could talk with someone about the promise and the problems of this show. Frustrating.

The evening takes me to a venue called Teatro LATEA, housed in an enormous former public school building. I would ultimately see three out of my 13 shows here, and I’m surprised that a building with multiple theatre spaces has completely escaped my notice until now. I see a play about corporate/industrial inhumanity, followed – in the same space, an hour later –by a two-person series of blackout sketches on the theme of romance. The latter is charming, and with some polish could make for a popular entertainment with little of the bohemian aura of the Fringe about it; the former left me somewhat mystified. So day two yielded three qualified wins and only one (not such a terrible) loss. Things are looking up.

Day 3

My god, it’s beautiful out again. When I committed to this experiment, I didn’t stop for a second to think about the distances between venues, or that it might a) rain b) be above 90 degrees c) be stiflingly humid or d) all of the above. But I couldn’t ask for nicer August days in the city. I have no doubt that my attitude towards the whole experience would have been vastly different had I been sweaty or soggy or both. Maybe there is a Thespis after all.

Penko Gospodinov and Anastassia Liutova in “The Spider.” (Photo courtesy Miroslav Veselinov).

The day offers a schedule closer to what I’d originally imagined: five shows between lights up at two p.m. and the final blackout at 10:20 p.m. Today is the day I see the bathtub play and the talking grapes. It is also the day I see solo shows so dire that I am embarrassed for both the performers and the audience. One is a stand-up act that seems to have been cobbled together from a marathon of Comedy Central stand-up material, and yields almost no laughter from anyone, least of all me. Maybe I’m being punked, and this is the next Andy Kaufman? Is this a meta-commentary on stand-up comedy? I think not. The other solo pieces, not comedic, resemble nothing so much as spoofs of exercises in a consciousness-raising group from the 1970s, with a great deal of careful miming to accompany not just actions, but words and thoughts. Isn’t it enough to be told that the sun came up without having it demonstrated? If you say you’re reading, must we watch you flip pages? How much must we learn about that clichéd first trip to buy feminine hygiene products? Oy.

Together, these shows prompt me to wonder that if these made it into the Fringe, which was curated, what on earth were the rejected shows like? Am I being cruel? Perhaps, but that’s part of why I avoid being a critic. I hold very strong opinions about what I see and at this stage of my life, I probably dislike more than I like. It’s not an admirable trait. To be fair, many years ago, Ian McKellen told me that you learn more from watching bad theatre than from good theatre. I should have invited him.

Beyond the tub, the grapes and the shows I will not speak of again, the fifth piece is another promising work with a talented, if not completely in-sync cast, that starts as workplace comedy and ends as a dystopian vision from The Twilight Zone. Again, people to watch for all around in the future, especially as I’ve adjusted my internal critic to consider promising as success.

It’s a shame that I finished with one of the downer shows, as my final day doesn’t exactly send me out on a high. That said, I complete my final day with a reasonable amount of energy. I’m sufficiently stimulated by the past three days that I sleep very little that night, and awaken the next morning as if preparing to head out for day four. But in point of fact, come two p.m., when I might have been back in the theatre, I commence a multi-hour nap, and my Saturday is lost in lethargy and recuperation.

Epiphany

Did I think I would learn something new about theatre when I concocted this scheme? Perhaps. Or maybe I just wanted to set some mini-endurance goal for myself, something that would be a good story to tell friends. “Hey, remember that time I saw 13 shows in three days?” But truth be told, just as I went in blind about what I’d see, my thoughts were comparably inchoate about what I’d discover. These three days of solo theatergoing pointed out several things about myself, and about my relationship to theatre.

I had to grapple with the fact that, as the product of elite theatre, I have been molded into an elitist. In addition to the Wing, I’ve worked at, among others, Goodspeed Musicals, Manhattan Theatre Club and The O’Neill Theatre Center, all well established before I ever set foot near them. That, plus growing up in such proximity to New York, and so very close to the Yale Rep and Long Wharf Theatres, meant I was seeing very highly developed work from the start.

The construct of my Fringe experience also brought home an aspect I’ve not previously contemplated about theatergoing, namely that it is a social experience. I’ve certainly spent plenty of time in theatres (legit and movie) by myself, but it’s not my preference. However, having committed to 13 unknown shows, I couldn’t very well find one person who would want to join me, and the lack of advance schedule meant I couldn’t invite different people to different shows.

As a result, I was largely speechless for the better part of three days (uncharacteristic of me, to say the least) because I was alone and I’m not prone to striking up conversations with people in adjacent seats, or standing next to me while waiting in line. I was able to use the social media lifeline, but sparingly and only intermittently. To top it off, as someone who often attends shows late in previews or early in their runs uptown, I’m used to constantly running into people I know at the theatre; that happened at only a single show. I was among strangers virtually the whole time. My binge was a lonely adventure. That’s not in the Fringe brochure, but it was a lonely stint of my own making.

Corollary to the loneliness was the dislocation. I was a stranger in a strange land. Save for the occasional chain restaurant (one can find Subway and Baskin Robbins on the LES, though I spotted no Starbucks), every storefront was new to me, and because I hadn’t mapped out my trip, I was often at a loss regarding where to go in my limited free time. That eased by day three, as I learned that the Lower East Side isn’t some far-off kingdom; it’s merely a few blocks beyond territory that I know, a couple of stops on the F train that I’ve never taken. I will go back, on a camera safari, on a dining trip with my wife. My island has gotten a bit bigger. What the hell took me so long?

And as for letting someone else choose theatre for me? Even after seeing them, I doubt I would have made any effort to see even one of the pieces I went to, had they been described to me.

What was the scorecard? I found: one show which was an utter surprise and brought unstinting joy; a play by a very promising writer who I plan to follow; two potentially strong pieces with general appeal, but in need of greater polish; a surprisingly charming and thoughtful work about inanimate objects; a clever sketch that would have benefited from firmer direction; a funny idea that was buried inside too much exposition; a singularly unique idea that nearly wore out its welcome; a play that was well intentioned but unskilled; a puzzlement; two shows that were embarrassing for both audience and performers; and one piece that was loathsome.

But as I think about it, adding the Fringe programs to my random stacks of theatre programs that haven’t yet been sent to storage, here’s the funny thing: I wouldn’t be surprised, were I to line up any of my regular theatre-going in 13 consecutive production chunks, if I had the same range of reaction. Might the more finished work that is my usual fare yield a better ratio of hits to misses? Perhaps. But bigger theatres and bigger budgets are no guarantees of success, and I say that as someone who saw Suzanne Somers’s brief Broadway turn in The Blonde in the Thunderbird, a solo autobiography show of massive self-absorption that remains the hilarious nadir of my theatergoing life. That might have been better at the Fringe, funnily enough, perhaps performed in a bathtub. As I’ve learned, it’s all a matter of perspective.

To read this article in its originally published form, visit Narratively.

I have yet to see Pinter in the Pinter or Sondheim in the Sondheim. I have, however, seen Ayckbourn in the former and, incongruously, Pee Wee Herman in the latter. For anyone confused, I am referring to the recently renamed Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End and Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre. I applaud the naming of these venues, and I am equally enthusiastic about the Caryl Churchill Theatre that will open in Surrey next year. They are manifestations of a topic I find myself musing upon: using theatre naming as a means of promoting the awareness of theatrical history.

On the one hand, the name of every Broadway and West End theatre carries history, since the venue name will be associated perpetually with famous productions that played there. However, names are not exactly fixed in stone. While Broadway’s Belasco and New Amsterdam may stretch back to a century ago, the current Helen Hayes Theatre is the second building to honor “the first lady of the American Theatre”; the original (which had two names before Hayes) was torn down some 30 years ago. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre 50 years ago; today, that same theatre is the David T. Nederlander, named for a member of the family that now owns it.

The point is that theatre names are somewhat fluid, and the rationale behind their naming, past and present, can have a variety of motivations. It was certainly the style, once upon a time, for the impresario who built the theatre to name it after himself, but in New York, there has been an intermittently enlightened approach that has resulted in such venues as the Lunt- Fontanne Theatre (named for the husband and wife acting duo in 1958) and the August Wilson Theatre (renamed in 2005, just after the pioneering African American playwright passed away, the building’s sixth name). Among Broadway’s 40 theatres, two are named for legendary critics, the Brooks Atkinson and the Walter Kerr, and a third for newspaper caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, no small recognition for the fourth estate.

Other theatres are named for more practical reasons: when the not-forprofit Roundabout Theatre Company reclaimed a theatre on 42nd Street, part of the restoration and its ongoing funding was secured through a long term sponsorship that named the new venue the American Airlines Theater. Purists were dismayed, but to my mind, it was not affront, since it reestablished a working theatre where none had been for decades.

But I return to the Wilson, the Lunt-Fontanne, the Sondheim, the Hayes, because to me they are exemplars. Maybe, just maybe, patrons seeing shows in those theatres might take the time to find out about these storied names, both bygone and current. Perhaps programmes or websites can provide not just the history of the theatre, but of its namesake. Could our theatre capitals take the opportunity to make themselves billboards for theatre history with more judicious naming? In New York, what of a George Abbott, a Comden and Green, a Wendy Wasserstein Theatre? And they need not be posthumous. Harold Prince, one of the most influential figures in New York theatre from the 1950s to today, might be thusly honoured (even if he has had, at one time, not one but two theatres named for him in Philadelphia). In London, what of Ayckbourn, Stoppard, or Ralph Richardson?

This is not a decision that can be achieved through public opinion, since the authority rests with the owners of the buildings themselves. But perhaps while theatres retain the truly memorable, essential names, the more generic ones can become theatrical history markers. By way of example, both New York and London have Lyceums that might be better off personalized, if preservation regulations allow it. Since theatre is not a religious rite, why do London and New York both have St James Theatres if he was the patron saint of furriers and chemists?

Some theatres’ historic names have been proven outdated, the figures they were named for more fleeting than expected. Perhaps we must change these pieces of the theatre’s history in order to better promote theatre history and commemorate it for subsequent generations.