A weeklong festival will open the Arrow Street Arts theater venue in Harvard Square in late March.
The organization wants to pack its renovated 4,500-square-foot black box theater and new 1,100-square-foot street-front studio with talent and performances in what executive producer Georgia Lyman said won’t be just another theater event, but a community celebration.
“We’re expecting music and dance and circus and kids and events and community workshops and open rehearsals, anything that you can think of, as long as we can fit into the space,” Lyman said.
The festival will be hosted by Arrow Street Arts and produced by Liars and Believers, a Cambridge-based theater collective.
Lyman expects to launch an open call to artists this month for rock ’n’ roll, opera, chamber music, aerial circus art or even just a reading for a fledgling play that needs an audience. The goal is to showcase Greater Boston’s artistic community in a beloved space – the American Repertory Theater’s old Oberon stage – that’s been completely reimagined. A jury will release its setlist in January; selected artists will get compensation.
Longtime Cambridge resident and arts advocate David Altshuler founded Arrow Street Arts to help fill the region’s need for accessible rehearsal and performance spaces, well-documented in a Boston Performing Arts Facilities Assessment and Cambridge’s Mayor’s Arts Task Force Report.
Final work on the building – including massive updates to audio-visual and public address systems – is expected to be complete by this winter, and the street-front studio activated as an intimate rehearsal, class and small presentation space as early as December.
“It’s going to be a very in-demand venue, sheerly because of the tech support and the specs that are available in the black box,” Lyman said.
The facility hosted a soft opening with a Oct. 13-Nov. 5 run of Moonbox Productions “Sweeney Todd.”
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