Why Off-Off-Broadway's wild project Launched a Do-or-Die Capital Campaign

When the wild project launched its do-or-die capital campaign a couple of weeks back, an industry reeling from several hits to the off-off-Broadway community braced for another one. However, even though the downtown arts community had suffered several losses, the news that the non-profit needed to raise $1 million in only three months caught many by surprise. Just how was the East Village company so close to losing its home? The wild project is not at risk of shuttering because of rising rents or low ticket sales, but rather because loss of a federal government grant meant it would not have the money to purchase its venue as planned.

According to wild project Artistic Director Ana Mari de Quesada, the company, IndieSpace (which guides theater companies in real estate deals), and the landlord of the East 3rd Street building wild project calls home all met about wild project possibly acquiring the space in February 2020. A month later, the pandemic hit, and everything was put on hold until 2022. That year, wild project began a more lowkey capital campaign, hiring consultants and working to get funding from philanthropic organizations and the government. It was awarded a $1,000,000 grant from former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and a $250,000 grant from the Local Community Assistance Program fund via NYS Senator Brian Kavanaugh's office. While this summer a ton of New York City cultural institutions received money from the New York City budget for capital projects—Keith Powers posted proudly on social media about the over $8 million Roundabout received to renovate Studio 54—those funds cannot go to property acquisition and therefore wild project was not eligible. It was, however, eligible for discretionary funds from Senator Schumer’s office. Those funds simply did not come through.

“We were on Chuck Schumer's appropriations list to get $1 million,” de Quesada explained. “But when it went to the Committee on Appropriations to approve everyone's list, we didn’t get approved, so that’s when everything flipped on its head. Everyone thought it was standard and would get approved. When Chuck Schumer’s office reached out to the Committee to get more clarity on their funding decisions, the Committee said they were faced with more funding restraints than usual due to the statutory funding caps from the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was a debt agreement between Biden and McCarthy, which ultimately impacted their ability to deliver earmarks. Not to mention the Senate received more requests this year due to the Republican ban on HUD EDI earmarks for not-for-profits.”

Remember, Democrats had the majority in the Senate and Schumer was the Senate Majority Leader. But even he couldn’t get his grants all through. The “Republican ban” de Quesada refers to is a ban announced in April that banned nonprofit organizations from receiving funding (commonly referred to as “earmarks”) from HUD’s Economic Development Initiative (EDI) program in fiscal year 2025. This occurred after certain Republican house members balked at earmarks for organizations serving members of the LGBTQ+ community. So the environment created by that ban, and the June 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, combined to make a seemingly sure-fire grant get rejected.

That was August. In October, the landlord informed de Quesada that the company had until February 2025 to buy the building or else they’d put it on the open market. Number crunching began and, to get an affordable mortgage, wild project and IndieSpace decided $2.25 million was needed to purchase the $5 million building and be able to keep up with the payments. That means the company needs $1 million more, which seems nearly impossible.

“We don’t need that money as cash in our pockets,” de Quesada said. “As long as we know we’d get the money in 2025, we’d be okay, but without committed funds it would be financially irresponsible to sign our contract of sale.”

Still, that’s a tall order, and de Quesada is aware of that. She has been using her network to spread the word and urging others to do the same. The company has raised just over $10,000 since the campaign began, not nearly enough. To make it seem obtainable, she has been thinking of it as 4000 donations of $250 each, but knows that a larger government or philanthropic grant would make the mark much easier to hit. It’s possible the company could move forward with less than $1 million—that figure was calculated with a mortgage at a certain interest rate and length, if a better one can be obtained, the magic number would go down—but that is the goal.

The $5 million purchase price includes the air rights, so I raised with de Quesada partnering with an entity that would want to utilize those air rights; she explained the foundation of the building would only sustain an additional floor or two, limiting the possibility of partnership without a complete demolition and rebuild. (Definitely not ideal. Still, it might be better than completely losing the venue.)

The loss of wild project alone might not cause alarm, but insiders lament the loss of what used to be an arts district. PS122, err, Performance Space New York, is no longer what it used to be—and not only because it’s no longer called PS122. The closure of the Connelly was recently announced. Upright Citizens Brigade closed its East Village location in 2019. FRIGID New York closed out its residency at The Kraine Theater late last year. And that is just that area. The greater downtown landscape is also dire. It was announced this weekend that Blue Man Group, which started in the East Village, is closing. Soho Rep. is in the midst of its final production downtown before moving to midtown.

The wild project hosts resident series such as Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks (which launched What the Constitution Means to Me, among others), The Fire This Time Festival (which provides a platform for early career playwrights of African and African American descent), and Fresh Fruits Festival (which bills itself as “a celebration of LGBTQ arts & culture”), and many independent productions. I spoke to several people who had work done at wild project and they all thought they’d find another home if they had to, but still stressed how essential wild project is to the landscape.

“For years, pretty much every indie theater has come knocking on our door about The Fire This Time coming under their umbrella,” Kelley Girod, Founder and Executive Producer of The Fire This Time Festival stated. “We have actively chosen over the years to keep The Fire This Time downtown because there’s very little black presence downtown in the theater. I feel really strongly that we want to maintain a black presence downtown.”

“The nature of what we do is that we have to be flexible,” Girod added. “We always have to pivot. If we lost a home tomorrow, we would figure out how we still make this happen. Does one of these things have to shrink? How do we reimagine? It's what we do. People in theater, we land on our feet, we figure it out. But it would be very, very, very bad to suddenly now have our options limited in terms of being able to maintain a footprint in the downtown theater scene.”

There are of course remaining downtown theaters and one possible closing will not be the death of the scene. It seems every few weeks now we hear about something that will be the end of the world and yet the world keeps spinning. But death by a thousand cuts is more painful than an immediate slaughter. It’s important to stop the bleeding. As we continue to lose our best-known theaters, that lose is felt. Sure, there are some success stories. For example, Miriam Battye’s Strategic Love Play—which I enjoyed—lost the Connelly, but got a berth at Audible’s Minetta Lane, a higher profile venue (though for a shorter run than its scheduled Connelly booking and without its originally planned in-the-round staging). However, the great majority of efforts will be forced into lesser-known venues where they will likely get less attention. That’s of concern to artists but should also be of concern for everyone reading this as well.

Visit https://gofund.me/6a6666a7 to donate to the wild project. And please keep theaters in your annual giving plans. With Republican control of the legislative and executive branches of government, federal funding for the arts will be virtually non-existent.