TDF Stages

After three years of renovation, the innovative nonprofit opens its new permanent home

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At a time when Off-Off Broadway theatres are increasingly endangered (just look at the closing of the Kraine and the current Catholic church kerfuffle at the Connelly), the opening of a new venue is cause to celebrate. And while The Bushwick Starr is far from new—the Obie Award-winning Brooklyn nonprofit has been producing genre-defying shows since 2007—its stylish facility at 419 Eldert Street is.

The theatre's original location on Starr Street (hence the name) was in a mixed-use building, situated alongside apartments and up a flight of stairs. Its new home in a converted Bushwick warehouse and former dairy plant "is allowing us to welcome people in a more accessible way," says artistic director Noel Allain, who cofounded the theatre with Sue Kessler.

Operating entirely on the ground floor, the new Bushwick Starr features a large lobby space, a flexible black box and the same adventurous programming it's long been known for.

Over the past 17 years, The Bushwick Starr has championed cutting-edge artists and acclaimed works, including Heather Christian's Animal Wisdom, Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet and Diana Oh's The Infinite Love Party. Jeremy O. Harris, The Debate Society and David Greenspan have all done shows at the Starr. It has also premiered productions that hopped across the East River to longer runs in Manhattan, including Miles for Mary by The Mad Ones which transferred to Playwrights Horizons, and Haruna Lee's Suicide Forest, which was remounted at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

At The Bushwick Starr, audiences might experience "an artist you've never heard or seen before presenting new work at the beginning of their trajectory," explains Allain. That said, "We also often work with artists who are more established doing something that there isn't a home for elsewhere."

Their new digs have been many years and dollars in the making. They bought the building in 2021 for $2.2 million and a planned 18-month renovation turned into three years, during which they continued to mount work at other Brooklyn venues. Now that they're finally moved in, they're glad they took the time to get it right. "We wanted to create a space that was able to be used in the way our old space was and grow a little bit, but not too much, while making it more user-friendly for designers and audiences," Allain explains.

This empowers The Bushwick Starr to keep doing what it does best, generate bold new theatre, but with room to expand on that work and its many offstage efforts.

Endeavoring to be a multipurpose community hub, the theatre has open lobby hours during the day along with workshops and events, so locals can drop by, hang out, work or meet up with others. There's free Wi-Fi, chairs, bathrooms and a library of scripts.

"We really want it to feel like a home," Allain says. "Coming to The Starr is more than coming to see a show, it's a place that feels welcoming."

Since audiences are increasingly consuming art online, Kessler believes The Starr must offer programming beyond plays. "With streaming and our busy lives, it's getting harder and harder to make the decision to go out, to make that choice to come to the theatre and put our phones away," she says. "Not to sound grand, but how theatres create community and a lasting relationship with audiences is what will provide reasons to come back."

That means crafting various pathways for engagement, which The Bushwick Starr has been doing for years. "Very early on, we were having a conversation about what kind of organization we wanted to build, and it was clear there was a segregation with spaces in the neighborhood," Allain recalls about the rapidly gentrifying Bushwick. "So, we consciously said we wanted to be the kind of space that is welcoming to all of our neighbors."

That mindset led to the creation of numerous programs, including Senior Storytelling, a bilingual memoir workshop with community members in Bushwick and Ridgewood senior centers, and Big Green Theater, an eco-playwriting program for public elementary school students.

"We now have people from these groups attending shows and interacting through workshops with the artists," Kessler says, noting that some of the original Big Green Theater students are now grown and have returned as mentors. "It's only going to get richer and more integrated in everything we do. You start to see these journeys and relationships built over the course of years. We're in the lives of people and that's incredibly rewarding."

The Bushwick Starr also has a history of collaborating with other theatres. In fact, its inaugural production at its new locale, Julia May Jonas' A Woman Among Women, is co-produced with New Georges. A riff on Arthur Miller's All My Sons, it's part of Jonas' cycle of "response plays" to dramas written by men about men.

Knowledge of Miller's play is not necessary as A Woman Among Women, which was recently extended to November 17 and just received a critic's pick in The New York Times, "stands on its own," according to Allain. "If Julia reframes these classic American plays about men and makes them about women, she's asking, 'Do they work exactly the same? Will we accept it? Will we hear it in an equally powerful way?'"

The Bushwick Starr's season continues in 2025 with Ian Andrew Askew's SLAMDANCE garage, a multimedia piece about identity and Afropunk, and RHEOLOGY, a new play by Public Obscenities Pulitzer finalist Shayok Misha Chowdhury about his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty, who also performs in the piece. Both shows are co-productions with other nonprofits.

Kessler and Allain hope curious New Yorkers will swing by to see a show or just check out their new place. "We're just three stops away from our old space," Allain says. "If you want to be stimulated, entertained and hopefully surprised, then The Bushwick Starr is a place for you."

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