By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOUTH STREET SEAPORT — A new theater with views of the Brooklyn Bridge will open its doors April 1 in the South Street Seaport Mall, staff announced this week.
Algonquin Theater Productions will initially offer cabaret, jazz, comedy and kids' shows in its new 200-seat space on the second floor of the Pier 17 mall, said Tony Sportiello, Algonquin's artistic director.
By the end of the year, the company hopes to turn the space into a full-fledged off-Broadway theater, with all the necessary equipment and backstage setup to house major performers.
Sportiello, 50, was drawn to the 3,700-square-foot space not just for the East River views, but also because he believes lower Manhattan is starved for good theater options.
"If there were 300 theaters down here, we wouldn't be here," Sportiello said. "Who needs another theater in Midtown? But this area does."
Sportiello hopes to draw regular crowds of lower Manhattan residents to the community-minded programming, along with the millions of tourists who visit the South Street Seaport each year.
The space will start by hosting weekly themed nights, like cabaret on Tuesdays or comedy on Thursdays, so locals know what to expect. Tickets for these basic shows will run about $15 to $20, though big-name performers or large-scale productions in the future would likely cost more.
Algonquin Theater Productions, which has produced three off-Broadway shows, including the long-running "Sessions," was previously based on East 24th Street, but left last year after the rent got too high. The new South Street Seaport space is much more affordable, Sportiello said.
A Times Square resident with an 18-month-old daughter, Sportiello also hopes to use the new theater to support budding playwrights by offering them opportunities to share their work and have it critiqued at various stages of development.
The theater company started moving into the space Tuesday morning, and Sportiello said they would spend the next month cleaning it up and getting it ready for the first audiences.
"It's extremely exciting and extremely terrifying," he said. "We've got a lot of work to do, and we're very pumped up."
