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Brooklyn Theater Looks for Help Extending Show at Interfaith Medical Center

 Brian D. Coats and Edwin Lee Gibson in a scene from Edward Albee's "The Death of Bessie Smith," being performed at Interfaith Medical Center.
Brian D. Coats and Edwin Lee Gibson in a scene from Edward Albee's "The Death of Bessie Smith," being performed at Interfaith Medical Center.
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New Brooklyn Theater/Kristina Williamson

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — The show must go on — with a little help from the public.

A Brooklyn theater company staging a play inside of Interfaith Medical Center to raise awareness about the hospital's possible closure wants to extend its run into February.

New Brooklyn Theater launched their run of "The Death of Bessie Smith" earlier this month as a way to highlight the Bed-Stuy hospital's issues, and to "provoke a conversation about health, race and class," according to theater representatives.

With the curtain ready to close Sunday night on the rare Edward Albee play, New Brooklyn Theater is looking to the public for help in extending the show until Feb. 9.

"Our hope is that by extending the show, more attention and awareness may lead to the public will to find a long-term solution that would save the hospital and save lives," read a statement from the theater.

The theater is asking for $25 online donations— the estimated cost of a ticket to the free show. 

Albee's play, one of his first, is set inside a whites-only hospital in 1935 and focuses on the urban legend of blues legend Bessie Smith's death. According to the story, Smith died when she was refused admittance to a hospital after a car wreck.

The play uses the urban legend to comment on race and inequality, a theme New Brooklyn Theater chairman Jeff Strabone said was particularly relevant to the case of Interfaith.

"If [Interfaith] were to close, that would be a racist public health outcome," Strabone told DNAinfo New York last month. "We need to have a conversation in this city about public health and race and class, and who's allowed to have a hospital, and who gets to decide."