Me and TNC: A Salute to Theater for the New City

A little post in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of that tremendous downtown cultural institution Theater for the New City. I first became aware of this revered arts center shortly after moving to New York in the late ’80s; I saw a friend there in a play by Romulus Linney somewhere around that time. It would be 15 years before I became deeply connected to the place though.

TNC was founded by husband-wife team Crystal Field and George Bartenieff and others in March 1971. The others soon dropped out. Bartenieff split off in the mid ’90s; I wrote about him here. So the main mover and shaker for most of that half century has been the indefatigable Crystal Field. In her youth, Field had been part of Elia Kazan’s Repertory Company at Lincoln Center, appearing in the world premieres of plays by Arthur Miller and others, and had a great part in the film Splendor in the Grass (1961). She was also a member of the Judson Poets Theater and Andre Gregory’s Theater of the Living Arts. TNC was originally founded at the Westbeth Center on the other side of town. Some of the first playwrights they presented included Charles Ludlam, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Leonard Melfi, and Richard Foreman. For the past half century they have continued to nurture experimental playwrights with offbeat voices, sometimes political ones, sometimes aesthetic ones. Sam Shepard’s Buried Childstarted there in 1979, moved uptown and won a Pulitzer Prize. (That play had a big impact on me when I saw the Trinity Rep production a few months later). In recent years, Charles Busch has premiered a lot of work there. TNC moved to its present WPA era building on First Avenue in 1986.

Here’s a thing a lot of people don’t know — TNC was the original producer of the Village Halloween Parade created by Ralph Lee! The two parties amicably parted ways a few years afterward, though TNC has presented their massive Halloween Ball ever since. Some other signature projects of Theater for the New City include their annual free, outdoorstreet theatreproduction which I have written about many times, as I am a huge fan of the populist spirit that underpins it. Tim Robbins started out performing in that show! TNC also produces the annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, which hundreds of theatre artists, musicians, dancers, poets, etc. participate in every year.

Anyway, when I started reviewing plays for the Village Voice and Time Out New York around 2000, I became much more aware of TNC, and began going there more frequently. It would be hard for me to count or collect all the pieces I’ve written about them over the past quarter century. (They feature in over 60 articles on this blog alone, and there are dozens for other publications). Articles I wrote about protest theatre in 2004 got me more deeply involved in what TNC does. And then, somewhere around 2006 or ’07, I think (?) I began to work there doing fundraising and P.R. I was very closely involved with the place for about a two year period, with many happy memories, and many funny stories (because this was, and still is, a place legendary for its characters). Back then, there was an anarchist book store in the lobby. Many freaks and nuts used to come in off the street — and who wouldn’t want it that way? I once saw an old man throw a steel garbage can at a woman he was arguing with. It was kind of like Tompkins Square Park with a roof. The place is massive, by the way. They have four separate theaters in their complex, an art gallery, a cafe, several dedicated rehearsal studios, a huge scene shop, and a massive storage facility for costumes, sets, and props. I think they must have the most to-die-for theatre-marking facility in all of New York. No word of a lie, the commercial theatre can’t afford anything like this. TNC owns their place, and they’re non-profit. They operate on a shoe-string; everyone who works there just barely keeps body and soul together, but the machine for making theatre art is the most enviable in all of New York. It’s the kind of place theatres in smaller regional cities might take for granted, but there’s nothing else like it in NYC anymore.

I was proud to get to present a lot of my work there in 2008 and 2009, including the biggest production to date of my American Vaudeville Theatre, a premiere production of my play Kitsch, the first readings of my play The Tenth Life of the Tom Cat, and a burlesque benefit show I produced for the theatre. I’ve also gotten to perform in the LES Festival of the Arts, and from time to time have acted in plays there, such as Jason Trachtenburg’s Me and Lee as recently as 2019.

TNC has always had friends in high places. Many pitch in by attending or presenting at their annual benefit, and as a consequence I got to meet people like Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Marian Seldes, Tammy Grimes, and Elaine Stritch.

But the most dazzling person to watch over the decades has been Field herself, who has held this community of hundreds of artists and this massive plant together over the decades with a combination of charisma, cunning, ingenuity, horse sense, experience, and a titanic force of will. She’s also one of New York’s great characters. On a few occasions (too few) she has brought that personality to the screen on such TV shows as Law and Order, and movies like Alan Parker’s Birdy (1984) with Mathew Modine and Nicholas Cage; Stephen King’sSilver Bullet (1985); Susan Seidelman’sCookie (1989) with Peter Falk and Emily Lloyd; and the Woody Allen movies The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), and Small Time Crooks (2000).

Happy birthday, TNC!