ON STAGES CITYWIDE?We've figured out a new trend: people take pivotal moments in New York architecture and assorted urban planning problems, and then, instead of protesting or launching a letter-writing campaign, they take them to the stage. (Insert jazz hands here.) Starting tonight at the Tisch New Theatre, NYU students tackle redevelopment and gentrification in an adaptation of West Side Story. Just imagine, the Sharks take on the Jets in a "fight for more than their pride; now their homes and their histories are threatened to be forever changed and shifted by Manhattan's race to the skies." Then coming this fall is a production called The Eternal Space, timed to the 50th anniversary of the demolition of the old Penn Station and, in fact, all about that event. They must be following in the footsteps of other recent works, like that musical about Robert Moses and an actual, legitimate, award-winning play about race and its role in one house's sale and a neighborhood's evolution, Clybourne Park. [CurbedWire Inbox]
UPPER WEST SIDE?After 10 years (and a grand total of $1.2 billion), the overhaul of Lincoln Center by star firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro is now complete. To celebrate there's a... panel! (We're sure there's already been a party for the VIPs, though.) On April 9, listen to a panel?made up of Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro and moderated by MoMA curator of architecture Barry Bergdoll?discuss the project in advance of a new book on the same topic. [CurbedWire Inbox; previously]
Loading comments...