New York theater shuts down as archdiocese says performances must be in line with Church

CNA Staff, Oct 23, 2024 / 16:15 pm

An off-Broadway theater in Manhattan has closed down after its landlord — the Archdiocese of New York — began exercising greater scrutiny over the plays performed there to ensure they were in line with Catholic teaching. 

The New York-based art group SheNYC said in a press release on Tuesday that the archdiocese had recently imposed “strict content guidelines” on the plays performed at the Connelly Theater in Manhattan’s East Village.

The Connelly Theater is housed within the Cornelia Connelly Center, a Catholic girls school. SheNYC said in its release that the archdiocese “has directed the theater to deny the space to any shows or companies that would be seen as inappropriate by the Catholic Church,” including shows about abortion and transgenderism. 

“The priest in charge of the jurisdiction is personally screening scripts to ensure they fit within strictly Catholic doctrines,” the group said.

The New York Times on Wednesday reported that theater manager Josh Luxenberg resigned from his post last week amid the dispute. The Connelly Center, meanwhile, reportedly announced on Tuesday that it was “suspending all operations of its theater.”

New York Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling told CNA in a statement on Wednesday: “It is the standard practice of the archdiocese that nothing should take place on Church-owned property that is contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

“That applies to plays, television shows or movies being shot, music videos being recorded, or other performances,” Zwilling said.

Neither the Catholic school nor the theater responded to queries from CNA regarding the dispute and the shutdown.

But Brianne Wetzel, the school’s executive director, told the New York Times that the archdiocese “has sole control over the approval process of the productions that are performed there.” Income from the theater has been used to offset operating costs at the school, Wetzel told the paper. 

School officials did not know when the theater would reopen, Wetzel said. 

Asked via email if the archdiocese had mandated the theater’s closure, meanwhile, Zwilling on Wednesday said: “We did not order it to be closed.”

The theater was recently scheduled to host a performance of “Becoming Eve,” a play based on the eponymous memoir by Abby Stein, a man who was ordained a Hasidic rabbi before he began to identify as a woman.

SheNYC, meanwhile, said the archdiocese “specifically [called] out shows we’ve done in the past at the theater.” The art group has previously performed plays featuring lesbian romances and “transgender” characters.