The Public Theater Presents THE CULTURE CAPITAL Tonight, 5/7

The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Patrick Willingham, Executive Director) will continue the 2011-2012 Public Forum season tonight, May 7, with THE CULTURE CAPITAL: IS NEW YORK CITY STILL A HOME FOR ARTISTS?

Presented in association with New York Magazine and the Aspen Institute Arts Program, this evening will feature a roundtable discussion with culture writers from New York Magazine about the changes they’ve seen in the city’s creative life. The second part of the evening will include a dynamic conversation about living and working in New York today with four of the city’s leading young artists. Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley will also talk about their new musical FEBRUARY HOUSE and perform a song from the show, which premieres at The Public in May.

The Public Forum takes place tonight, Monday, May 7 at 8 p.m. in the Newman Theater. Member tickets, priced at $20, are on sale now. Single tickets are $25.

In their new musical, FEBRUARY HOUSE, Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley tell the story of a Brooklyn rowhouse shared in the 1940s by an extraordinary array of artists: W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers, and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Tonight, the Public Forum will consider how the creative life of New York City has changed since then. Does the city continue to attract strange collections of artists that way? Have changes to the city under Mayor Bloomberg affected the work that gets produced, or the collaborations that occur? How does the city's creative life affect the rest of us?

To answer those questions, culture writers from New York Magazine (The Public Theater's media sponsor) will hold a provocative roundtable discussion. Novelist and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen (contributing editor), Justin Davidson (classical music/architecture critic), Amy Larocca (fashion director), and Jerry Saltz (art critic) will exchange views on how the creative life of the city has changed. Damian Woetzel, former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and now the Director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program, will moderate.

Then, four up-and-coming New York artists will talk about the pleasures and perils of living and working in the city's arts scene right now – and give us a glimpse of its future. The conversation will feature the celebrated young composer Gabriel Kahane; the writer/director Young Jean Lee, who was recently hailed as "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by The New York Times; the visual and video artist Kalup Linzy, who was recently named a “Young Master” by New York Magazine; and the Brooklyn-based novelist and story writer Emma Straub, the author of the breakout story collection Other People We Married. The discussion will be led by Jeremy McCarter, the director of the Public Forum.

The evening will also feature a discussion about The Public’s upcoming musical, February House, with composer Gabriel Kahane and book writer Seth Bockley, as well as a special preview performance by Kahane.

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