Theater Director Files Federal Lawsuit Against New York City Theater Company New 42 For Racial Discrimination Hostile Work Environment And Harassment
The plaintiff, New 42 employee Kevin Ray, alleges that New 42 actively and deliberately promoted racial stereotyping and discrimination through misguided DEI initiatives
Mr. Ray is supported by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism
NEW YORK, June 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism , the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties, announced today that Kevin Ray, a theater director supported by FAIR, has filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against his employer, New York theater company The New 42nd Street , alleging racial discrimination and a pervasively hostile work environment.
Since 2015, Mr. Ray has been a Teaching Artist at New 42, where he promotes arts education through theatrical presentations to students in schools throughout New York City. As an employee at New 42, Mr. Ray has suffered from an ongoing hostile work environment resulting from the organization’s promotion of segregation, stereotypes based on skin color, and disparaging insults.
Details of New 42’s Alleged Illegal Conduct
Mr. Ray alleges that, despite raising serious concerns with New 42 about its hostile work environment, the organization made no changes and instead, retaliated against him by no longer giving him work as a Teaching Artist. Although Mr. Ray is still employed by New 42, he has been given no meaningful work opportunities since he voiced his concerns.
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Competing With Motion Pictures
The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only limited competition. By the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer were presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. While live vaudeville could not compete with these inexpensive films that featured vaudeville stars and major comedians of the day, other theatres survived. The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music hall, and other light entertainment, tended to ignore plot in favor of emphasizing star actors and actresses, big dance routines, and popular songs. Florenz Ziegfeld produced annual spectacular song-and-dance revues on Broadway featuring extravagant sets and elaborate costumes, but there was little to tie the various numbers together. Typical of the 1920s were lighthearted productions such as Sally Lady Be Good Sunny No, No, Nanette Harlem Oh, Kay! and Funny Face. Their books may have been forgettable, but they produced enduring standards from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and Rodgers and Hart, among others, and Noël Coward, Sigmund Romberg, and Rudolf Friml continued in the vein of Victor Herbert. Live theatre has survived the invention of cinema.
How Broadway In The Theater District Became The Great White Way
The Theater District has been nicknamed quite a few times the Rialto, The Main Stem, The Street, to name a few but no sobriquet has stuck quite like The Great White Way.
In 1880, Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square was brilliantly lit by Brush arc lamps, making that stretch among the first electrically lighted streets in the country.
Shep Friedman, a columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph, dubbed it The Great White Way in 1901, borrowing the line from the title of a book about the Arctic.
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Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity
The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying and people, and one of the world’s largest. were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011. Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, wrote that in the era after , “New York City became the literal gay metropolis for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from within and without the United States: the place they chose to learn how to live openly, honestly and without shame.”
The annual traverses southward down and ends at in Lower Manhattan the parade rivals the as the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June. The annual is held in and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.
How The Theater District Nyc Began
In 1836, Cornelius Lawrence, the first popularly elected mayor of New York City, began urging residents to head north towards 42nd Street, proclaiming that they should move up town and enjoy the pure, clean air. Those were the days.
It wasnt until the end of the 19th century that theaters and restaurants began setting their roots in what would eventually become the Theater District, following the Metropolitan Opera Houses construction at West 39th Street and Broadway in 1883. And by the time theater mogul Oscar Hammerstein I opened his vaudeville Victoria Theatre in 1899, electrified trolley lines had made the area more accessible.
Times Square, the hive-like nucleus of the Theater District, eventually took its name from the one-time residence of The New York Times at 1475 Broadway. The paper, which moved into the building on that site in 1904, moved out eight years laterbut the location remains among the most valuable advertising opportunities in the world.
The New York Times building on Times Square under construction in 1903.
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Best Theater District Restaurants Nyc
We spoke with hundreds of Headout users and Broadway enthusiasts, and even had a chat with Miki Kawasaki, an accomplished food writer and former contributor of the popular food blog, Serious Eats. We asked them what their favorite places to grab a bite before hitting the theater are – here’s what they had to say!
Reader Questions: Theater District Edition
Tips for eating around Broadway, whether you have time for a sit-down meal or just a quick bite before the curtains go up.
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It is a heavy day in New York City following news of the shooting at a subway station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Im keeping the victims in my thoughts, and I hope you will, too.
In my very first dispatch, I said that if the New York City dining scene had an F.A.Q., where to eat on Mondays would be near the top of that list. But according to roughly a dozen emails in the Where to Eat inbox, the most pressing question is an age-old one: Where can I eat in the theater district?
Keep the questions coming to , and well try to answer them periodically in the newsletter.
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Broadway And The Theater District
However, by the 1930s, the Great Depression and the subsequent second world war drastically changed this entire situation. With financial woes plaguing almost every American in some way, visitors to the Theater District plummeted, and soon after, theaters that had been opened to meet the demands of the roaring twenties began facing bankruptcy. To try to entice visitors, the Theater District tried to lower prices and focus more on comedies . One of these comedic works popular at the time was a play by George Kaufman and Edna Ferber called Dinner at Eight which opens at Broadways Music Box Theatre and becomes one of the biggest successes of the season, with 232 performances. This picture of a similar theatrical company from around the time helps showcase what the production could look like
While this did lead to some visitors coming to the district, the number of those frequenting the Theater District generally fell back down to pre 1920 levels and included once again mainly wealthy, white, high society New Yorkers, as they were the only ones who could afford to go. Through this, we see that the social history of the New York Theater District in the early 20th century as a story of the best of times and the worst of times. With 1920s era Theater District being more diverse in its entertainment and visitors, as well as successful, while post 1920s Theater District was more limited in its entertainment and attendance and struggled.
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See Classic Plays & Musicals In New Yorks Broadway Theater District
With over 500 seats available at 41 different theaters, soak up the excitement of the model of modern dramatic theater at the Broadway Theater District of midtown Manhattan. Join tens of millions of people who take seats in Broadway audiences every season and watch the best live performers in the business hone their craft so you can get a firsthand explanation for why New York City is the cultural capital of America.Head out from 42nd Street to Ninth Avenue to see Off-Broadway theaters and Off-Off-Broadway theaters to see a more of a raw expression of modern on-stage drama.There are ample places nearby for you to eat when the show is over. Plenty of chain restaurants abound but there are also charming locally based eateries such as Meskerem, Ocha, and Vice Versa. Shop for your cosmetic needs at Sephora or get some new books at Kinokuniya.
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Living In The Theater District Nyc
Living in the Theater District of NYC isnt for everyone. One of the most popular spots for tourists in the country makes, as you might expect, for unrelenting crowdedness. Traffic here is the stuff of nightmares, and if youre a fast walker, like most New Yorkers are, then youll be eternally frustrated. These sidewalks are for the tourist stroll, not the commuter dash.
But if the bright lights and the big city are your cup of tea, then this might be the right place to call home if you can afford it. The crowds assure that theres never a dull moment, and the lights oh, the lights will keep you company through sleepless nights. As will the drama, the musicals, the boundless neon entertainments. The Theater District is very much the flashy New York of our dreams, for better or worse.
As for living spaces, youre looking mostly at apartments in high-rise buildings. Studios in the broader area of Midtown Manhattan rent for a median price of $2,895 per month, while the median rent in Midtown West, which encompasses the Theater District, was $3,449 at the time of publication. The median asking price for homes in the neighborhood was $1.298 million. So this is an expensive, central location, but even here, its possible to find a studio apartment renting for $2,650. Of course, the other side of the coin has stunning 4.5-room condos for sale asking $2.13 million.
Origins And Early History
In 1836, mayor Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street to encourage the city’s northern expansion, saying “move up town and enjoy the pure, clean air”. The Theater District began attracting theaters and restaurants after the Metropolitan Opera House moved to West 39th Street and Broadway in 1883.Oscar Hammerstein I opened his Victoria Theatre on 42nd Street in 1899. Accessibility to the Theater District improved as electrified trolley lines started in 1899, followed by the opening of the New York City Subway‘s first line in 1904.
“The Great White Way” is a nickname for a section of Broadway in Midtown Manhattan that encompasses the Theater District. In 1880, Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square was illuminated by Brusharc lamps, making it among the first electrically lighted streets in the United States. By the 1890s, 23rd Street to 34th Street was so brightly illuminated by electrical advertising signs people began calling it “The Great White Way”. As the theater district shifted uptown just before the turn of the century, the nickname stuck and became synonymous.
Over the years, the district has been referred to by New Yorkers as “the Rialto”, “The Main Stem”, and “Broadway”. Around the turn of the 20th century, it was simply called “The Street”.
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Producers And Theatre Owners
Most Broadway producers and theatre owners are members of The Broadway League , a trade organization that promotes Broadway theatre as a whole, negotiates contracts with the various theatrical unions and agreements with the guilds, and co-administers the Tony Awards with the American Theatre Wing, a service organization. While the League and the theatrical unions are sometimes at loggerheads during those periods when new contracts are being negotiated, they also cooperate on many projects and events designed to promote professional theatre in New York.
Of the four non-profit theatre companies with Broadway theatres, all four belong to the League of Resident Theatres and have contracts with the theatrical unions which are negotiated separately from the other Broadway theatre and producers.
The majority of Broadway theatres are owned or managed by three organizations: the Shubert Organization, a for-profit arm of the non-profit Shubert Foundation, which owns seventeen theatres the Nederlander Organization, which controls nine theatres and Jujamcyn, which owns five Broadway houses.
Water Purity And Availability
New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected . As a result of the watershed’s integrity and undisturbed natural system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification by plants. The city’s municipal water system is the largest in the United States, moving over one billion gallons of water per day. The north of the city is undergoing construction of a $3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City’s water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city’s current availability of water. The ongoing expansion of , an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city’s history, with segments serving Manhattan and the Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020. In 2018, New York City announced a $1 billion investment to protect the integrity of its water system and to maintain the purity of its unfiltered water supply.
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Culture And Contemporary Life
New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world by New York’s . A book containing a series of essays titled New York, Culture Capital of the World, 19401965 has also been published as showcased by the . In describing New York, author said, “Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather.”
Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the , which established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The city became the center of in the early 20th century, in the 1940s, in the 1950s, and the birthplace of in the 1970s. The city’s and scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s. New York has long had a flourishing scene for .
The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the in literature and visual art ” rel=”nofollow”> New York School) in painting and ,, , , , certain forms of , and in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world. The city is also frequently the setting for novels, movies , and television programs. is one of the world’s preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media. New York has also frequently been ranked the top of the world on the annual list compiled by the .
Moving To The Theatre District
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Early Theatre In New York
New York’s first significant theatre presence arose about 1750 when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar’s Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia, and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street ” rel=”nofollow”> Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others.
The plays of William Shakespeare were frequently performed on the Broadway stage during the period, most notably by American actor Edwin Booth who was internationally known for his performance as Hamlet. Booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865 , and would later revive the role at his own Booth’s Theatre . Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, and Charles Fechter.