The Bridge Stage of the Arts

Bridge Productions are always staged in spaces exceptional for their beauty and resonance of the past. Although based in Manhattan, in the 1980s, The Bridge produced summer music theater festivals in the south of France, with an emphasis on the American musical theater. Alan Jay Lerner (lyricist, librettist, My Fair Lady, Camelot), Comden and Green, lyricists-screenwriters Singin' In The Rain, Will Rogers Follies) tap dancer Honi Coles, (Tony Award winner, My One and Only), Virgil Thomson, (critic and composer, Four Saints in Three Acts), members of the American Dance Machine and of Joseph Chaikin's experimental The Open Theater, and others performed at night and taught master classes during the day. Each summer, through the invitation of The Bridge and the International Theatre Institute,[40] (a branch of UNESCO), 150 actors, singers, dancers, choreographers, playwrights, composers, directors and lyricists and librettists from, at times, 22 countries including France, China, Australia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, America and Japan came to partake free of charge in The Bridge programs. The performances attended by an international audience were sold out.

Surrounded by sunlit vineyards and streams, the festivals' first site, in 1982, was a restored 17th century factory, in the small, medieval township of Saint-Chinian, South of France, (Languedoc-Roussillon region), where the uniforms of Louis XIV's regiments were once embroidered. In 1984, The Bridge Festival moved to the nearby walled medieval city of Beziers also in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of the South of France.

To bring something as high spirited and new as the American musical into these timeless surroundings was thrilling, giving a sense of new in old, of continuity of tradition and the march of time.[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]

Betty Comden and her partner, Adolph Green, were prolific lyricists and librettists of Broadway and film musicals including Singin' In The Rain, Bells Are Ringing, and On the Town. Comden gave The Bridge kudos in 1985.

'The Long Arm of the American Musical Stretches to Beziers'

… It is not unusual for American musicals to appear in London … nor is it strange that A Chorus Line is a smash in Budapest, but just why were 50 assorted voices of musical workshop members belting out the song "Just in Time" one morning in July in the vaulted 11th century cloister of Sainte-Aphrodise in the relatively small town of Beziers (population 100,00) somewhere in the southwest of France!

'Just in time, I found you just in time …' was issuing from throats that had traveled from Norway, Belgium, Sweden, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Madagascar, Rumania, New Jersey and several other of the United States, only because my partner Adolph Green and I were using that song we had written with Jule Styne for the show Bells are Ringing as an example of a certain kind of theatrical-musical moment. It pleased us to learn that most of the international group of students seemed to know, or at least know of the song. They spontaneously sang along, their voices echoing, perhaps as far as the foothills of the Pyrenees. Ah your music, your theater, she is indeed the international language, no?

…The concept of The Bridge, a yearly workshop and festival devoted to the American musical, to be located in France … was to be literally a bridge between countries and cultures to disseminate knowledge on the subject by assembling "stagères", working participants from all over the globe, and bringing over from America leading practitioners of musical theater to do the disseminating. Her dream was that some day in the future, for example, if Hal Prince wanted to experiment with Japanese Noh players, working with a Swedish lyricist, a Yugoslavian composer, and a Bessarabian choreographer, such an international collaboration would be assembled under the auspices of The Bridge. This is but a facetious example of the possibilities. Avra Petrides has a strong and sincere feeling about the need for open communication through the arts among the many diverse cultures of our all too unpeaceful world, and hopes The Bridge will help.[59]

In 1996, in Lower Manhattan, The Bridge initiated its Performance- Forums in the Art Deco "Cocoa" building at No.1 Wall Street. In this series, American/international theater artists collaborate with astrophysicists, sculptors, theologians, philosophers, poets, novelists, painters, musicians, choreographers, filmmakers, and others working in a variety of creative, scientific and intellectual disciplines. The aim: to better understand each other's endeavors and find new and exciting ways to combine them in stage production. The theme of the initial Performance-Forum was Time (as perceived by people in different disciplines and cultures.)

For several months prior to this event these people collaborated on a performance based on that theme:

• Tom O'Horgan, Theater director of the Broadway productions Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Lenny, Inner City; director for the Vienna State Opera, New York City Opera; and co-author of Senator Joe at the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway.
• Neil de Grasse Tyson, Ph.D. Astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium.
• Michael Sherman, A futurist, who was advising governments and corporations on their long-range plans. He has made a comparative study of images of time in modern culture.
• Min Tanaka, International choreographer and Butoh dancer.
• Tony Rothman, Ph.D. Physicist specializing in cosmology, who has been on the Editorial Board of Scientific American, and a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
• Kirk Nurock, Composer/pianist, who has played with Phil Woods, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie and Donald Byrd. His compositions and arrangements have been performed by Judy Collins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dick Hyman, Bette Midler, Jane Ira Bloom, The Brecker Brothers and Jay Clayton.
• Serge Gubelman, who has been playing the Didgeridu since the 70's.
• R.M. Fischer, Sculptor and installation artist, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others. His public installations include Rector Gate at Battery Park City and the Kansas City Sky Stations.
• Brenda Bufalino, Tap dancer and Founder of the American Tap Dance Foundation, who has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center and on PBS' Great Performances series; and-
• Theo Bleckmann, Vocalist and composer who has worked with Philip Glass, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Sharp, Meredith Monk and Kirk Nurock.

This debut Performance-Forum, given on March 28, 1996, was attended by approximately two hundred artists, scientists and philosophers, who, at its conclusion, participated in the Forum, which took the form of a panel-led discussion on the evening's theme Time.[5][6][60][61]

In addition, in 1996, The Bridge re-introduced the beautiful 19th century reddish circular stone structure in Historic Battery Park, Castle Clinton, as a remarkable performance space, with the production, Hart and Hammerstein Centennial Plus One. An evening of song, it was hosted by CBS' Charles Osgood, and featured leading singers and Rob Fisher, then musical director of the Encores! series at the New York City Center. It was the first performance at Castle Clinton since the mid-1800s when, as an opera house, it was the Lincoln Center of its day, attracting impresarios like P.T. Barnum and performers like Jenny Lind. For the Hart & Hammerstein production, The Bridge brought in Broadway theater technicians who, by working into the wee hours of the night before the performance, erected a 30 inch high, spacious stage, and to guard against the possibility of rain bringing the performance to a close, covered the roof opening with a translucent white tent.[7][8][62]

In 1941, the Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses, wanted to raze Castle Clinton, claiming it was essential to building the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel from the Battery to Brooklyn.[63] Protests from historic preservationists and others brought this plan to a halt but not before the roof had been removed.