New Brunswick Performing Arts Center rendering

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Rendering courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architecs

Rutgers has teamed up with several organizations to finance and build the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, scheduled to open in August 2019. The $65 million facility, located next to the State Theatre on Livingston Avenue, will be the home for three regional companies—George Street Playhouse, Crossroads Theatre, and American Repertory Ballet—as well as for the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. The Rutgers arts conservatory will finally have a venue that will allow the highly regarded school to offer a program in musical theater while expanding its opera program. “Rutgers students will have the opportunity to perform for a downtown audience, right next to a professional presenting house, the State Theatre,” says George B. Stauffer, dean of the school. The performing arts center, which will have two theater spaces, is part of a development that will include offices and residential units. It will be “a rich haven of creation and culture,” says James Cahill SCJ’76, the mayor of New Brunswick.