QUEENS THEATRE IN THE PARK

An Indoor Performing Arts Center                                 

Located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Address: P.O. Box 520069 - Flushing, NY  11352

Administrative Offices: 718-760-0686

Box Office: 718-760-0064

Fax: 718-760-1972                                                     

Queens Theatre in the Park is the premier venue for performing arts in Queens.  The Theatre provides quality and diverse performing arts activities to the residents of Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, and to the surrounding New York City metropolitan region.  Queens Theatre presents and produces programs for adults, children, and family audiences that reflect this diversity and features international, national and local artists.  The Theatre offers access to a full range of performing arts, including theatre, dance, music, and children’s programming.  Its season runs year round with performing arts programs presented from October through May and a Latino Cultural Series and Festival held from March through December. A Black Cultural Arts Series, presented in collaboration with other Queens venues, was initiated in Spring 2000, and an Asian Cultural Arts Festival was begun in the Spring 2006.  The Theatre’s goal is to provide the community with quality presentations at affordable prices, easy access, and a sense of shared community in a local place of public assembly. 

The Theatre is housed in the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which was designed for the 1964 World’s Fair by Philip Johnson as a cycloramic tribute to New York State.  The Pavilion was converted to a theatre in 1972 and was operated by various organizations until 1985.  Queens Theatre in the Park was officially established in 1989 with the full support of the community and the Queens Borough President. 

After a $4 million renovation, Queens Theatre officially opened to the public in 1993 in a facility that allows the Theatre to stage productions equal to those of any Off-Broadway house in Manhattan.  The Theatre now offers performances in its 464-seat main stage theatre and its 99-seat studio theatre.  In addition to its own season, Queens Theatre in the Park is the most sought after space for community arts organizations and local promoters.  The Theatre stages 400 performances annually, reaching upwards of 100,000 people. 

Act II:  Looking Ahead

Queens Theatre in the Park  is presently completing a $ 20.45 million physical transformation of the Theatre.  This major capital investment will add a 75-seat cabaret performance space with a full service cafe and kitchen facility; build a dramatic new 3,000 square foot lobby/reception area; provide new visitor amenities and improve the facility’s accessibility; and develop the financial foundation needed to sustain the Theatre in the future.  These improvements will transform Queens Theatre in the Park into a destination for the residents of the borough and beyond. 

Programs

Queens Theatre has matured from a community-based presenter into a critically and popularly acclaimed producer that fosters new dance through commissioning projects, new play development through staged readings with respected directors, develops regional touring productions, and produces new plays and musicals for runs in Queens and Off-Broadway in Manhattan.  Each October through May, Queens Theatre presents a Theatre, Dance, Special Events, Celebrity, Family and Children’s Matinee Series.  Its success is reflected in the roster of artists who participate including Bill T. Jones, Spalding Gray, Rita Moreno, Flying Karamazov Brothers, Repertorio Espanol, and Paul Taylor Dance Company. 

In 1997, the Theatre launched the Latino Cultural Festival, an annual event that has become the nation’s largest multidisciplinary festival of Latino arts and culture.  Queens Theatre has become a leading international presenter of Latin American dance, music and theatre and the Theatre has assumed the moniker “the new home for Latino culture.” 

Signature programs such as the Latino Cultural Series and Festival and the Black Cultural Arts Series have brought about tremendous programmatic growth.  In addition to providing performance employment opportunities for Latino, Latin American, African, African American, and Caribbean artists, these programs attract ethnically diverse audiences to the Theatre and have received broad critical acclaim and recognition from the City’s major media and press outlets.  The Asian Cultural Festival made its debut in the spring of 2005.

The Theatre continues to build upon the success of these programs and thus created Immigrant Voices, a project that presents free readings and workshop productions of new plays that reflect and celebrate the rich cultural and ethnic diversity of Queens, and the International Movements Project, an innovative commissioning program that provides opportunities for Latin American choreographers to create and then premiere new works at the Latino Cultural Festival.  The Theatre also provides arts-in-education programs through the Young Adult Performance Series, an in-school and after-school program for students at Francis Lewis High School and Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School, and now enters its third year as one of the leaders in the city-wide Cultural After School Activities (CASA) Program.

Latino Cultural Series and Festival

Queens Theatre has broadened the experience of its core audience to include works by under-recognized artists from around the world and works that tap into the communities of Queens.   The acclaimed Latino Cultural Series and Festival was designed to reach out to the burgeoning Latino population in Queens, which now accounts for 25% of total residents.  Begun in 1997 as a modest cabaret series, QTP’s Latino Cultural Series and Festival features a combination of music, theatre, dance, film, children’s productions, and visual art exhibitions. The Festival’s success led QTP to integrate Latino programming into its ongoing performing arts programs.

Highlighting Spanish, African and Caribbean influences, presenting rich folk traditions, and spotlighting a range of popular and cutting edge artists, Queens Theatre has transformed the Festival into an international showcase ranging from Rock en Español, Nuyorican performance, Latin Jazz, and Andes folk music, to Flamenco and modern dance. Artists presented, representing seventeen nations, include: Ballet Foclórico de Chile; Eva Ayllón, the Peruvian “Queen of Afro-American Song;” Mexico’s Maldita Vecinidad, the pioneers of the “rock in español” movement; Teatro del Temple, Spain’s innovative theatre company; Editus, the Costa Rican jazz trio; Argentinian singer Alberto Cortez; New York’s Ballet Hispanico and Repertorio Español; and numerous others.

Black Cultural Arts Series

Established in 2000, the Black Cultural Arts Series highlights the rich and diverse

contributions to theatre, dance, and music made by African, African American, and Caribbean artists. During the past few years, the Series has included play readings at partner sites throughout the borough; co-productions with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and regional tours of From the Mississippi Delta, directed by and featuring Tony Award winning actress Trezana Beverley and Marcia L. Leslie’s The Trial of One-Short Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae; Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC); Women of the Calabash; Street Sounds; Nancy Wilson; George Benson; and Ysaye M. Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Immigrant Voices Project

In 2002, Associate Artistic Director Rob Urbinati spearheaded a new play development program, the Immigrant Voices Project.  This program offers multi-cultural emerging playwrights the opportunity to present and develop their work.  Integral to Queens Theatre’s mission, this program fosters cultural appreciation, presents new and ethnically diverse works, and reflects the wide range of cultures that make up the borough of Queens.

International Movements Project

 

The International Movements Project combines the Theatre’s expertise in Latino culture, success with dance programs and interest in creating new works, as well as strengthens cultural collaborations between Queens Theatre and international artists.  This innovative commissioning program provides the opportunity for Latin American choreographers to create and perform new works.  Each year a new dance piece by a Latin American choreographer, working with a composer and a dance company from the United States or Latin America will receive a world premiere as part of Queens Theatre’s Latino Cultural Festival and will subsequently tour to other venues in the United States.

Asian Cultural Festival

The Asian Cultural Festival is home to a weeklong festival showcasing Asian and Asian American performers, which in spring 2007  included a premier of “Undesirable Elements” by theatrical innovator Ping Chong and performances of “7-Eleven” by Desipina & Co.

Arts-in-Education

In 2007 Queens Theatre in the Park worked with 13 schools in Queens and one in Brooklyn, with students from all over the world, through the Cultural After School Adventures (CASA) program.  Generously funded by New York City Council members, this program is in its second year, and has grown by leaps and bounds. The focus of the program is the students.  Through writing exercises, they discover what is on their minds, and work very hard to edit, script and present their work.

The CASA program is a lively, tremendous opportunity for Queens Theatre  to expand its services to the Queens community, and provide opportunities that previously did not exist, It is a way for Queens Theatre to give the artists and thinkers of the future a platform for expression. The students have used that platform to dive into our hearts.