The Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center (“the PAC”) will be unique on the cultural landscapes of New York, the United States and the world. It will be a global center for the creation and exchange of art, ideas and culture.
Under the leadership of Director Maggie Boepple, the PAC has established a core team of artistic leaders: David Lan (Artistic Director of London’s Young Vic) as Consulting Artistic Director; Lucy Sexton (artist, producer, and Director of the New York Dance & Performance Awards (aka The Bessies)) as Associate Artistic Director; and Andy Hayles, Managing Partner of Charcoalblue (London’s National Theatre, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, and the future home of Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse), as theater design consultant.
They envision an institution that will produce and present new work, primarily by New York and U.S. artists, often in collaboration with artists, companies and institutions in other parts of the world. The PAC will premiere works of theater, dance, music and opera, including productions that span multiple disciplines.
All of this will take place in an adaptable venue with unprecedented digital connectivity. Charcoalblue, which will collaborate with the PAC’s design architect, has devised a preliminary design with the flexibility to accommodate a variety of stagings and seating arrangements. The PAC will include approximately 550- 250- and 150-capacity spaces that can operate independently, or combine for larger performances.
The technical capacity is important not only to expand the potential audience of performances (via high-definition simulcast), nationally and internationally, but also to facilitate the creation of distinctly 21st Century art: collaborations, in real time, between performers in New York and, say, Beijing and Sydney.
The PAC’s innovation will go beyond both art and technology to accomplish a unique social function. Boepple et al are planning a cultural destination like David Lan’s Young Vic, one that is widely considered one of the world’s most exciting performing arts centers, and that currently has no equal in New York. The Young Vic is full of life from morning into the night, attracting a vastly diverse community of artists, performance-goers, professionals and others, sometimes just for a meal, coffee or glass of wine. Likewise, meeting a desire that the Lower Manhattan community has expressed, the PAC will have ample public space, open all day, for these purposes. Furthermore, given the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and the Fulton Street Transit Hub, both slated to open soon, the PAC will be exceedingly accessible to people from across the city and beyond.
Last Updated: February 14, 2014