The Brooklyn Academy of Music isn't letting the sluggish economy dampen its plans for expansion, both physically and creatively. Its partnership with London's Old Vic Theater, called the Bridge Project, saw the second premiere of its inaugural year Tuesday night with the first outing of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. About 500 guests, including Kevin Spacey, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Clarkson, showed up for a dinner, performance, and dessert reception on the stage of BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House.
Producers at BAM, including director of special events Glenn Stiskal, wanted to play with the tension between hot and cold—a metaphor explored in the play—in their decor for the dining area, so they decided to cut the stage in half, with help from Bella Meyer of Fleurs Bella. One side saw hanging icicles and dead branches covered in frosty blue lights, while the other half featured lush, flowering trees and wooden deck chairs under the soft glow of orange and yellow.
Before the performance, 325 guests gathered on the stage for a dinner catered by Great Performances. And while they and others watched the play at BAM's neighboring Harvey Theater, the crew brought out a surprise centerpiece for the dessert hour, a giant topiary of The Winter's Tale's Hermione. The figure helped further divide the stage while guests picked over bite-size parfaits and blueberry crumbles, and enjoyed drinks provided by local winery Peconic Bay and Bass beer.
The Bridge Project is a three-year effort, and The Winter's Tale is just one of theatrical endeavors planned to bring in talent from the Old Vic and Sam Mendes's Neal Street Productions. The iniative itself is a part of the even broader Next Stage Campaign, which has BAM planning to raise more than $300 milliion in the coming years, with the most notable beneficiaries being a planned 263-seat theater and an expansion of the group's cinematic complex. Tuesday helped put as much as $500,000 in that pot.
