A NOTE FROM LOUIS LOPARDI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FRESH FRUIT FESTIVAL
The Wild Project, our Non-Profit home theater of more than fourteen years, may revert to a public sale in another month. We are about to lose one of the few remaining incubators of new arts left in this city. Our organization, All Out Arts, may lose funding, and a lot of the audience and artists we usually help. We may recover eventually, but this city will lose a rare theater resource forever.
We lease from The Wild Project in ‘alphabet city’ for most of our offerings, and are a resident company there – contributing active support for everything that theater does.
Wild Project has been trying to buy their theater building from its current owner since 2022, and was poised to accomplish that this very month. They had raised enough cash for a down payment, and obtained from accountants financial statements guaranteeing their day-to-day operating budget is unaffected by the carrying costs.
They have raised so much money now – slightly short of their five million dollar goal – both in state & local grants pledged plus an incredible outpouring of local public support, that the few hundred thousand more the bank requires to guarantee an affordable interest rate should not mean the end of the Wild Project.
I am amazed that in this city I chose to move to in the mid 70s when it was hitting bottom, and worked in for nearly 50 years as it again became a major center for new arts, the media is oblivious to the small “world theatre” taking place right here, right now. Yet with all the distractions and threats clouding the airwaves in this politically charged climate, no major media seems willing to underscore what is about to happen down on East Third Street, as this rare and vital theater building goes on the chopping block. Please help us spread the word to newspapers and radio stations that the Wild Project is worth saving.
Louis Lopardi
Executive Director, All Out Arts
“Fighting Prejudice Through The Arts” for 30 years!
Exec@AllOutArts.Org
p.s:
More than half of our primary mission at All Out Arts is based on providing the live theatre experience to those artists operating between the often ‘guerilla theatre’ of the downtown scene, and legitimate “Off-Broadway.” The Wild Project (an awarded “green” space with state of the art technology) matches this requirement precisely: With our guidance and increased technical staff, it has handled true AEA Union Showcase productions, while still being affordable to newly emerging creative artists. But this is all going to end in about a month, unless the media in this city takes notice. Shall this vibrant and active community theater which survived the Covid-19 mass theater closings close its doors? Help us spread the word, before the Lower East Side gains yet another pricey bar and grill.
More details:
The Wild Project capital campaign:
https://thewildproject.org/root-us-in-the-les/
Ana Mari de Quesada, the Wild Project’s General Manager:
adequesada@thewildproject.org
Online donations:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/making-a-permanent-home-for-wild-project?attribution_id=sl:e6fe4b6b-027c-42cb-ba19-3483eb38e551
ARTIUM: OMNI 