At the start of the pandemic, the outlook looked bleak for the Barrow Group, the 35-year-old Off Broadway theater company known for its actor training programs. It ran its existing classes online and then, in July 2020, left the space on West 36th Street it had leased for 18 years.
But now – due to funding from the Paycheck Protection Program, a Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and a strong appetite for online training and artist development programs that have earned more than $1.9 million in revenue since the start of the pandemic — it is preparing to open a $4 million performing arts center at 520 Eighth Avenue, just around the corner from the old space, in April.
“Our brokers were able to secure a deal well below market price,” said Robert Yu Serrell, the company’s executive director, of the new space; the company entered into a 15-year lease in November, with two options for a five-year extension. “It’s actually less than what we paid in our previous space, and we have more space and more security,” he said, referring to the building’s security system.
The Barrow Group, which has grown from offering 70 classes a year in 2010 to 661 online and in-person workshops as of April 2020, had been looking for a larger space even before the pandemic, said Lee Brock, who opened the theater with her partner in 1986. founded. co-artistic director and now husband, Seth Barrish.
The new 13,155-square-foot space — just over 3,000 square feet larger than the previous building — will feature a 60-seat theater, five sound-damped studios, offices and a community hall. The phased renovation is expected to start this month.
The company, which counts Anne Hathaway, Tony Hale and Noah Schnapp (“Stranger Things”) among the actors who have completed the training programs, has an annual budget of approximately $1.6 million. It has served more than 5,200 actors, writers and directors since the start of the pandemic, Serrell said.
For the foreseeable future, the focus will continue to be on development programming and training, Barrish said, with a plan to eventually produce commercial shows as well. Some of the theater’s recent productions have included K. Lorrel Manning’s ‘Awake’, a series of nine short plays that explore topics such as homophobia, police brutality and immigration; and a reprise of Martin Moran’s “The Tricky Part,” a sexual abuse memoir that DailyExpertNews critic Ben Brantley called “beautiful and harrowing.”
“That’ll be phase two,” Barrish said. “If we get work that we think wants to be shared commercially, we do it. When we will have that project and when we will rent a theater, I am not sure yet.” (The 60-seat theater, he said, is intended as a space for development work, not commercial productions.)
The Barrow Group has raised about $2.5 million for the two-phase, $4 million renovation project, of which the first phase will cost about $800,000, Serrell said.
