Culture Chronicle

Second Stage to Invade Broadway
Acquisition of Helen Hayes appears closer.

Crain's New York Business - October 3, 2010
By Miriam Kreinin Souccar


Riding high from its string of commercial and critical hits over the past few years, Second Stage Theatre is setting its sights on the bright lights of Broadway.

The nonprofit off-Broadway theater company, which produced Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Next to Normal and breakout hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, has hired an architect and is launching a $45 million capital campaign to purchase and renovate the 600-seat Helen Hayes Theatre on West 44th Street.

Commitments for about 50% of the campaign goal are in hand. Now trustees of the theater are looking for a person or corporation to pony up around $15 million in exchange for the naming rights to the theater--a relatively modest sum for such a prestigious location.

The move to Broadway will give Second Stage--which was founded in 1979 to produce contemporary American drama--a third and much larger venue to present material in, as well as its first permanent home. The theater currently leases its main space on West 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue, which has 296 seats, and presents smaller shows during the summer in a 100-seat space on Broadway and West 76th Street. It will also greatly raise the small theater's visibility, helping it attract bigger artistic talent due to Broadway status and making more of its productions eligible for Tony Awards.

"This move will elevate our stature," says Stephen Sherrill, chairman of Second Stage and a partner at private equity firm Bruckmann Rosser Sherrill & Co. "Now we'll be in the same league as the large nonprofit theaters with Broadway houses," he adds, such as the Lincoln Center Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company and the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Second Stage signed an initial purchase agreement with the owners of the Helen Hayes two years ago, but its plans to raise the necessary money were stalled by the financial crisis. Now executives there say they are confident enough in the economy to move forward and are actually in a better position fiscally than they were previously. They expect to close on the theater in 2012 and open their first season there in 2013. For the full article, click here