Dear Monica:
I finally found your neighborhood, and saw what an excellent view you had offered me and my family to watch the Fourth of July festivities, before you became ill. Indeed, we did not need to sit on the roof, since there is a view at the end of the street, looking out beyond the East River into New York Harbor, towards the Statue of Liberty. Brooklyn Heights was once quite affluent, but now the buildings are aging, and are undergoing a period of renovation, so it is not unusual to see construction on any given block. Still, it is obviously a fashionable neighborhood. Your building was once a large townhouse, subdivided into apartments, on a quiet side street. Several blocks away, there are streets bustling with bars, restaurants, and boutiques.
The Blue Heron is near Gramercy Park, in the East 20s above Greenwich Village, just off of Park Avenue South. It is a good neighborhood. The theater group bought an old health club a couple of years ago, and has been working to raise money to remodel. It has a main stage that is somewhat small, seating limited to about a hundred, appropriate to more experimental theater work. There is a complex of rooms being renovated downstairs. Your dedicated room is appropriate for read- throughs and scene work, and therefore has been designated a rehearsal studio, although it can also be used as a Green Room for actors waiting for the curtain call, or a meeting room for the Board of Directors.
The dedication was in the context of a larger donor reception, but a lot of time was taken up speaking of you, and I was pleased that your cousin Maureen and her husband managed to make it, as well as Tom, an old friend who helped me put the fund over the top, and Ciel, an alumna of your college who helped me reach Blue Heron in the first place. My wife and son were also present.
We stayed to see the current production, about James Baldwin, which was professionally produced, if somewhat flawed. The Blue Heron, as a non- profit theater in New York, tries to stage new plays, and got great reviews in the past year in the New York Times for one of its productions. It also serves as a venue for professional actors who might desire more challenging roles to participate, and it involves both college students and high schools in community oriented events, from time to time. It also rents facilities to other companies, on occasion.
Anyway, I think you would be pleased with the room and the dedication, and I took some footage to pass around to some who might express a desire to see it by PM. I also have a photo, although you are in you 20s in it, and I have to scan it is. Your cousin is trying to find a more recent photo to send me.
Talk to you later, Neo |
