Lincoln Center Announces Restart Stages Initiative to Encourage the Arts Outdoors

Here's another reason to look forward to springtime in New York City: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has announced a new initiative called Restart Stages. The project is intended to create 10 outdoor performance and rehearsal spaces as well as other outdoor civic venues to help kickstart Manhattan's performing arts sector, which has been largely put on pause due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The initiative is being developed in coordination with the previously announced NY PopsUp to help extend reach far beyond Lincoln Center’s campus. All offerings will occur outdoors with safety protocols in place for artists, audiences and staff.

Restart Stages will launch on April 7, which is World Health Day, with a special performance to be announced for healthcare workers. Additional offerings will include a cabaret-style stage on Hearst Plaza, outdoor venues for rehearsals to open up the artistic process to visitors, an outdoor reading room, summer evening concerts, film screenings, dance workshops and more. Select Restart Stages events will be offered via livestream as well.

“The cultural community has an urgent role to play in the revitalization of New York, to showcase that our city is not just back economically, but spiritually and socially. Which is why we knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that as the city reopened, it was our absolute obligation and privilege to be first in line to support our constituents, New Yorkers and the cultural community,” said Henry Timms, President & CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in a statement.

Restart Stages is made possible by the Lincoln Center Board of Directors and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of the SNF-Lincoln Center Agora Initiative, a collaboration that reimagines and reactivates public space. In addition to arts programming, Lincoln Center will also offer blood drives in partnership with the New York Blood Center, food distributions in partnership with Food Bank For New York City and serve as a designated primary election polling place in partnership with the Board of Elections.