The Perelman Performing Arts Center: Celebrating Life and Resilience at Ground Zero

Joshua Ramus, architect of the Perelman Performing Arts Center, a new theater complex on the grounds of the World Trade Center (Photo: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

In a gigantic room, behind walls of translucent marble, workmen set the stage for the new construction of the World Trade Center.

It is not another office tower or a monument, at least explicit, to the memory of the attacks of September 11. It is a theater complex.

The Perelman Performing Arts Center, conceived two decades ago to bring life and draw people to a devastated and mourning place, finally arrives at a very different ground zero. The place is surrounded by new skyscrapers and located in a neighborhood with more residents than before the attacks. Every year millions of visitors flock to the monument and museum.

Still, organizers believe the arts space, also called “PAC NYC,” has an important role to play in one of America’s most sensitive historic spaces.

“The monument is here for people to come to mourn and pay their respects. The museum is for people to learn, become aware and never forget,” says Khady Kamara, executive director of PAC NYC. “And the Center for the Performing Arts is here for people to celebrate life and the resilience of New Yorkers and the country.”

Khady Kamara, executive director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center (Photo: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

Perhaps befitting a space for theatrical drama, the $560 million institution has had its share of difficulties. There were financial blockages, political bashing and a wait of years for construction to begin, while the designated site housed a temporary transit hub. The leaders, the architects, the design and the occupants changed.

Now the curtain will rise on September 19 with the first of five concerts focused on the theme of the refuge. These concerts will be followed by others that can only be attended by invitation, such as an open house for the families of the victims of September 11 and the first responders on the 22nd anniversary of the attacks that cost the lives of almost 3,000 people. at the Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about 9/11 and the responsibility we have to that community,” artistic director Bill Rauch recently declared from the 42-meter-tall cube building.

Daylight filters through the Portuguese marble walls, turning them into a radiant amber bedspread with veins of chocolate and caramel. Sedated by day, the building’s boxy exterior is designed to glow from within at night. Its nearly 5,000 marble panels are backlit by chandeliers in a corridor that wraps around the theater.

Bill Rauch, artistic director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center (Photo: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

Nearby, but out of sight, is the 9/11 memorial, concealed by the 12-centimeter-thick stone, subtly encased in glass to protect it and increase its energy efficiency. The windowless design keeps the bustle of theatergoers a respectful distance from the people paying homage at the monument, and vice versa, explained architect Joshua Ramus.

“I didn’t want to treat the monument as a show,” he said.

The arts center was built largely with private donations, including $130 million from former mayor Mike Bloomberg and $75 million from investor Ronald Perelman, plus $100 million from a government-funded redevelopment agency.

“There has never been anything like it in the area, and it will continue to fuel the city’s recovery from the pandemic, just as the arts helped our recovery from 9/11,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

A box-shaped building in the center, wrapped in translucent marble panels, houses the new theater complex on the grounds of the World Trade Center (Photo: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

With movable walls, seats, floor sections and even balconies, the space can be transformed from a 1,000-seat hall into three smaller spaces. These, in turn, can be organized into a total of 62 different stage and audience configurations, some of them as intimate as 100-seater rooms.

The special walnut panels solve the acoustic problems posed by the different sizes of the audience and the location of the stage. The 0.3 meter thick rubber pads located under the theaters absorb the sound and vibrations of a swarm of subway lines and commuter trains.

The inaugural season includes works as reflective as an opera about a case of racist hazing among US soldiers in the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, and as exuberant as Cats reimagined in ballroom drag culture. Matrix actor Laurence Fishburne debuts a one-man show. Authors and presidential daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush talk about parenthood. Native American comedians gather for a night of stand-up comedy.

“We didn’t want to avoid the topic of trauma, but we also didn’t want to soak up it,” says Rauch. He and Kamara stress that the institution aims to be accessible and appeal to a wide range of people, with tickets starting at $40 and free performances in the lobby, which will be open to the public every day.

However, the center has faced questions about its impact on the community and the cultural scene.

Ground Zero, the memorial that was built in New York after the attack of September 11, 2001 (Photo: Shutterstock)

When activists pushed this year to increase the number of affordable homes in a skyscraper planned elsewhere in the mall, their campaign argued that too much redevelopment money has gone into high-end non-residential buildings while too many New Yorkers have had to abandon area. Median household income and median rent are double the city average.

“The performing arts center is kind of an amenity for a luxury neighborhood that they’ve built,” said Todd Fine, who runs a historic preservation advocacy firm in lower Manhattan. He said the center needs to “show that the public is going to benefit.”

Many lower Manhattan arts groups struggled after 9/11, and one of the first conceptual plans for redevelopment called for “strengthening existing cultural institutions” while developing new ones. Initially, the arts center was to house three already established groups – two theaters and a museum of visual arts – as well as a new museum dedicated to freedom. Those plans later changed, though the 9/11 Museum took shape in a separate underground space.

Joshua Ramus, architect of the theater complex, a venue with 1,000 seats capable of being transformed into three smaller spaces (Photo: AP/Bebeto Matthews)

Rauch says the Perelman Center is committed to collaborating with local arts groups. The director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, an arts advocacy organization, believes the facility will foster an arts environment that will draw attention to local groups, not compete with them.

“It’s quite a statement to have such a beautiful building dedicated to theater on such hallowed ground,” said council executive director Craig Peterson.

James Giaccone recently pointed out the arts center to passers-by from the edge of one of the 9/11 Memorial’s waterfall pools. That edge is named after his brother Joseph Giaccone, a 43-year-old financial executive, father of two and husband.

James Giaccone, a volunteer with 9/11-related organizations including Tuesday’s Children, was initially wary of the political controversies surrounding early plans for the arts space.

He later came to see it as a step forward for the Trade Center and, on a personal level, as a way to live life to the fullest. His family and his brother’s family love to go to the theater.

“So I think he would appreciate it,” Giaccone said.

Source: AP

2023-09-08 03:40:17
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