Theater fanatics, you're about to have three new theaters to get your off-Broadway fix. The new off-Broadway theater complex the Theater Center will be open for business in early 2014, The New York Times reports. Broadway producer (and star of My Big Gay Italian Wedding) Hugh Hysell and actress and theatrical general manager Catherine Russell have teamed up to create the new venue, located at 601 Eighth Avenue and 39th Street. The Theater Center will include three performance spaces with 99-seat,199-seat and 249-seat capacities.
Russell developed several off-Broadway theaters, including the Snapple Theater Center, currently the home of The Fantasticks. The theaters will reportedly be rented out for between $5,000 to $10,000 a week, plus a percentage of the production’s box office sales. The complex will also feature a small restaurant or bar on the ground floor, with the three theaters on the second floor.
“General managers consistently tell us that the West Side of Manhattan in Midtown is where every producer wants to be, but there are too few venues,” Hysell told The New York Times. “There are also limited places with these numbers of seats, and very few spaces that can do 249 seats.”
Look forward to three new off-Broadway shows at the Theater Center in 2014!