Historic Bed-Stuy Theater Awarded $100K To Fund Cheap Tickets

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN -- Bed-Stuy's historic Billie Holiday Theatre won a $100,000 grant to make theater more affordable to more New Yorkers, organizers announced this week.

The famous Restoration Plaza theater, where actor Samuel L. Jackson launched his career, is one of 12 theaters to benefit from a $1.5 million grant from the JL Greene Arts Access Fund in The New York Community Trust.

“We are delighted to help ensure that New York’s wonderfully robust theater community is accessible to all,” said Jerome L. GreeneFoundation president Christina McInerney.

“This program will bring new people to the theater, enriching and advancing the lives of City residents.”

The fund, designed to make theater more accessible to New Yorkers of all income levels, will allow the Billie Holiday and two other Brooklyn theaters expand their free and discounted ticket outreach programs.

St. Ann's Warehouse, an avant-garde theater in DUMBO, will use the grant to buy tickets for immigrant activists and students while Theatre for a New Audience, the Fort Greene theatre that specializes in classic revivals, will fund more “pay-what-you-can” performances.

Manhattan's Apollo Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Classical Theatre of Harlem, New York City Center, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre Company, Second Stage and Signature Theater all won similar grants, as did the Pregones Theater in The Bronx.

The Billie Holiday Theatre has been making history since its debut in 1972 — Smokey Robinson, Samuel L. Jackson and Debbie Allen have performed in the theater dedicated to Lady Day.

The Billie made history in 1981 it transferred the hit play "Inacent Black" to Broadway with fifty percent financing from the black community, an event that was "a first in the theatre world," according to the theater's website.

The Billie recently reopened after a two-year and $4.1 million renovation to install a new grid of catwalks, a better lighting system, an electronically-controlled stage curtain and wider seats.

Photos courtesy of the NYC Department of Design and Construction and Hollis King