Billie Holiday Theatre

TArtistic Programming:FY23 marked The Billies 50th Anniversary Season and the first year we resumed in-person programming post-COVID outdoor festivals, live performances, theater productions, and a wide gamut of film, music, dance, visual arts, and other cultural offerings. The year began in July 2022 with our Black Joy Summer Fest, which included a multitude of free community events including dance workshops, jazz performances, film screenings (including the Black Joy and the 5th annual Nova Frontier Film Festival), our Skylight Open music concert series, and a 29-hour play reading series in partnership with QuickSilver Theater Company. Summerfest events attracted more than 8,500 people. In October 2022 we implemented our annual Restoration Rocks Saturday afternoon block party on Fulton Street, celebrating the people, arts, culture, and entertainment that make the Bed-Stuy neighborhood world-renowned. In May we launched an unprecedented exhibit called Black Genius: We Rise... Still, which featured the work of over 25 local painters, sculptors, photographers, and artists from the African Diaspora sharing perspectives on life during the pandemic. In May 2023 we launched our annual Community Day Celebration, marking the 25th Anniversary of the partnership between Restoration and the Brooklyn Academy of Musics DanceAfrica Festival at Restoration Amphitheater. Alumni members of DanceAfrica members performed along with current members of The Billies Youth Arts Academy.In addition to the programming mentioned above, including DanceAfrica and Nova Frontier Film Festival, in FY23 we worked for the first time with QuickSilver Theater Company and Manhattan Theatre Club, with whom we presented a continued conversation on the role of Black Theatre in the midst of health, racial, and economic pandemics. The conversation featured Professor Michael Eric Dyson and playwright Dominique Morisseau, moderated by Michael Dinwiddie.Community Access and Service:While The Billie engages audiences from across the country and around the world, its focus is engaging the nations largest community of African descent in Central Brooklyn. Historically underserved and underfunded by the arts, Central Brooklyn boasts a rich artistic legacy that has thrived despite ongoing racial disparities across income, health and education. Roughly a quarter of the population, and 30% of children under 18, live below the poverty line in Bedford Stuyvesant. The boroughs ongoing gentrification has led to a widening racial income gap with the average median income for new, predominantly white residents ($50,200) 44% greater than that of long-term residents of African descent ($28,000). Our work in the past year has reached an estimated 600,000 people, including more than 400,000 visits to our online platforms, and an estimated 200,000 visitors onsite to our Black Lives Matter mural. Our online works have received more than 6,000 comments and shares. We have engaged over 400 artists, including 60 for our Black Lives Matter mural alone, and 90 volunteer community painters. Education & Humanities Division:Our Youth Arts Academy (YAA) served approximately 75 NYC public school students in FY23, with classes in Drama, Drumming, Ballet, Modern Contemporary Dance, Hip Hop Dance, and West African Dance (Guinea and Sabar). We also offered an all-new boys-only dance class. For dancers 3-5 years old, we offered a Pre-Ballet class where children learned the basics of ballet while exploring their creativity and love for dance. For youth aged 12-18 we continued our popular pre-professional training program (PP), by audition only, which includes intensive dynamic technique classes that prepare students for college auditions and professional auditions. Our signature Black Arts Institute (BAI) provided BAI students with scholarships in FY23 for a five-week summer session. This session offered a comprehensive exploration of the history of the contemporary Black theater tradition. Classes in movement, scene study, and Shakespeare study augmented the core BAI curricula.