Crown Heights cast members in rehearsal.

What do you get when the All Stars Project (ASP) opens a brand new, $12 million performing arts and education center on 42nd Street in Manhattan? Theatre For The Whole City—a boldly creative and broadly inclusive program of theatre and performance offerings being presented in ASP’s three newly renovated theatres, as well as on stages in communities throughout the city’s five boroughs.

From youth talent shows and performance workshops, to socially conscious, entertaining plays, to edgy cabaret and experimental performance pieces, Theatre for the Whole City includes a wide array of performance experiences for the enjoyment and the enrichment of all New Yorkers.

Scene from Crown Heights (l. to r.) Nicole Quinones; Caleb Farmer; Vanessa Emmanuel; Dennis Johnson; Richard Clarke, Jr.; Donique Banks

Theatrical Offerings
All Stars Project’s newest youth program Youth Onstage! kicks things off with Crown Heights (January 16 – March 7), an original play inspired by the deaths and racial tensions in that neighborhood back in 1991. Youth Onstage!, under the artistic direction of Dan Friedman, provides young performers, aged 13 to 21, with the opportunity to perform on stage in plays that have something to say about the world and its future. Friedman, a thirty-year veteran of progressive theatre, has brought together a cast of 17 young African-American and Jewish actors for Crown Heights. In addition to live performance, this risk-taking production includes video documentary, song, rap and dance.The popular and controversial production has garnered press coverage on NY1, in the New York Sun, the New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, Jewish Week, and others.

Castillo Theatre opened on 42nd Street with Demonstration 2004!. This production, featuring the Castillo ensemble, tells the unlikely story of how a small collective of radical theatre artists, working in near obscurity downtown, wound up in the city’s entertainment capital, 42nd Street. The Castillo ensemble will improvise impromptu skits based on the lives of audience volunteers in the funny and daring show This Is Your Ridiculous Life (Saturdays, beginning April 3). Castillo Artistic Director Fred Newman, known for his powerfully insightful productions of the work of the celebrated German avant-garde political playwright Heiner Müller, will direct Müller’s Mommsen’s Future (April 16 – June 13).

Theatre for the Whole City’s program line-up also includes the work of Five Points Presents…, a new producing consortium of community-based theatres and artists now in residence at All Stars on 42nd Street. Their debut production of Ben Caldwell’s witty satire The Solution to All The World’s Problems brings much deserved attention to the work of one of the leading figures in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Woodie King, Jr., founder of the New Federal Theatre, will direct the show.

Bridging Communities “Audience development” takes on a whole new meaning at ASP on 42nd Street. Broadway’s audiences can broaden their cultural horizons by going out to Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, the Bronx and beyond to catch unforgettable performances by the city’s young people through Back to School, an entertainment program for the whole family. Back to School audiences meet at ASP on 42nd St. on Saturday afternoons to board a bus bound for an ASTSN audition, workshop or show staged in local school auditoriums. The All Stars Hip-Hop Cabaret (Fridays, beginning March 19) will bring the hottest acts from local ASTSN shows to perform on ASP’s 42nd Street stages.

Now more than ever, the All Stars Project is dedicated to unifying the city through performance, by actively promoting a developmental “back and forth” between different communities and cultures. With Theatre for the Whole City serving as a vital bridge, audiences can see themselves and the city in a whole new way.

For the full range of Theatre for the Whole City’s performance activities, dates, packages, and memberships, call ASP’s box office at 212-941-1234 for information.