Unexpected Loss of Upper West Side Street Lights Leaves Outdoor Theater Group In the Dark

By Gus Saltonstall

Theater is not meant to be performed in the dark.

Since the beginning of July, the Hudson Classical Theater Company, which has put on shows for the past 22 years, including Shakespeare, during the summer at the patio of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument within Riverside Park near West 89th Street, says that it has been forced to rehearse and perform in the dark, after all of the street lamps in the nearby area suddenly stopped turning on.

“We’ve been in pitch darkness since July 7,” Susane Lee, the executive artistic director of Hudson Classical Theater Company, told West Side Rag over the phone. “These past few weeks we’ve been rehearsing in the dark — and it really gets dark in that part of the park — all of the lights around the monument are off.

New York City lamppost lights on streets and in parks are programmed to turn on around sunset.

Lee added that lights are also off on the path coming from 91st Street that the group uses to get to the patio, as well as on the hill that leads down to Hippo Park and the nearest available public bathrooms.

Lee, along with Nicholas Martin-Smith, the founding artistic director of the theater company, who also spoke to the Rag, said that it appears that the lights have been purposely left off, as opposed to the lamps being broken.

“It’s one thing to have our actors rehearse in the dark,” Lee said. “That’s dangerous and we felt unsafe, so we started ending our rehearsals earlier and earlier because it is getting dark earlier, but the problem is for our shows, we have a lot of people in the audience and when it gets dark in our shows, we always rely on the lights to turn on.”

The company’s performances this summer have generally finished a little after 8 p.m., after darkness had already begun to fall, and rehearsals wrap up closer to 9 p.m.

“We don’t understand why those lights would ever be purposefully left off, since it’s such a popular area,” Lee said. “It’s not safe for us or our audience, or anybody else that is walking their dogs or jogging in the park.”

Lee and Martin-Smith said they had reached out to the city soon after the lights first stopped working on July 7, but had not heard back in an official capacity.

The Rag sent messages to both the New York City Parks Department and the New York City Department of Transportation for a comment and explanation of why the lights were not turning on.

A spokesperson from the Parks Department told the Rag that it was the DOT’s responsibility to maintain the street lights. When we reached out to the DOT, a spokesperson did not provide specifics on what had caused the lights to stay off in the area, but did say, “we are aware of the outages and are working to address them as quickly as possible.”

Martin-Smith mentioned his anxiety about the darkness.

“There was one night after rehearsal, which ends at 9, and I walked the stage manager down to the bathroom, but it was very dark behind the monument, and it was very scary,” he told the Rag. “We were both, and I didn’t want to show it, very anxious.”

Hudson Classical Theater Company is in the midst of finishing its last show of the summer season, “The Lady from the Sea,” which will run through August 17.

You can find out more about the theater company — HERE.

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