NEW YORK (AP) New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, director Julie Taymor and actor Mark Rylance gathered Tuesday in Brooklyn to help cut the ribbon for a jewel box-sized, shiny new theater, the first permanent home for Theatre for a New Audience in its 34 year existence.
It is the city's first new theater designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965, and is the first permanent home for the itinerant company, which was founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz. He estimates it will attract an audience of between 30,000-to-40,000, many public school children.
"Friends, Romans, Brooklynites," the mayor intoned inside the $69 million theater, which was created with public and private pledges. "Lend me your ears. We come not to praise Shakespeare, but to stage him."
In addition to a 299-seat main theater, the 27,500-square-foot company's home also houses a 50-seat rehearsal space and a lobby cafe. It overlooks a new public garden plaza and sits along a walking path between the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House and Harvey Theater. The city pledged some $34 million to the project.
Designed by Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, the new theater has a large glass facade, gunmetal gray panels, a 35-foot-tall main stage, a second-floor lobby and a central staircase. The building went up in a former parking lot and has been named the Polonsky Shakespeare Center after a gift from the Polonsky Foundation.