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Partly on the strength of Zohran Mamdani’s winning bid for the New York City mayoralty, affordability has become a rallying cry for the whole Democratic Party, including far beyond the five boroughs. Mamdani has targeted housing, child care, and other basic necessities of life in a city that’s been pricing out so many working-class and middle-class folks.
But the new mayor is aiming his affordability arrow at the arts too. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, Mamdani himself being a onetime rapper, not to mention the son of a world-renowned filmmaker.
Local theater in particular is suffering hard times, with affordable venues vanishing and federal government clawing back support for the arts. The mayor has taken notice.
Mamdani held a joint press conference in Brooklyn this morning with Under the Radar (UTR), an organization that produces theater festivals across the city while working to keep prices affordable. They announced a ticketing partnership, along with HERE Arts Center, called Under the Radar for All.
The initiative “will provide the opportunity for 1,500 New Yorkers to see select UTR performances at no charge.”
At the announcement event the music collective HawtPlates performed an excerpt from their UTR show Dream Feed, which opens January 13 at HERE (145 6th Ave., New York, NY). Readers can sign up at the HERE website with the code UTRFREE to access free first-come first-serve tickets for January 14, 15, and 16 at 8:30pm.
Some NYC theater presenters have long made subsets of tickets available to those with limited means. HERE, for example, makes “10 tickets available for $10 for every single performance across our two theaters all year long,” said co-directors Lauren Miller and Jesse Cameron Alick. “We are thrilled to take part in Mayor Mamdani’s first initiative to ensure that access extends to the arts across the city through its innovative partnership with the Under the Radar Festival.”
UTR co-director Kaneza Schaal waxed philosophical: “Theater at its best is a model of participatory society. Over the last three years, Under the Radar has continued expanding into a plurality of voices and perspectives. We are thrilled to gather with the mayor to expand and meet the civic duty of the arts: reaching representative publics.”
Said the mayor, “The arts are too often considered a luxury for the wealthy or a treat for the tourists, rather than a form of expression, joy, and relaxation that every New Yorker deserves. I am grateful for Under the Radar’s generosity and their work to share the experience of live theater citywide and am ready to build upon these efforts to make art accessible and affordable across our five boroughs.”
