Benefit for Green Theatre Collective Tomorrow

Tomorrow night the Green Theatre Collective (GCT), a Brooklyn-based theater group that uses minimal resources to perform in natural environments, will hold a benefit for its inaugural season. The benefit will be at Pianos NYC at 158 Ludlow St. in the Lower East Side of Manhattan from 7 to 10 p.m.

Attendees will hear live music from Reuben Chess of the band Quintus, Acoustic Electra and Sara Banleigh, and sample baked goods from Monicakes Bakery. The show will start at 8 p.m.

Suggested donation is $10, which will go to GCT’s production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, slated for summer 2011. For more information, visit www.greentheatrecollective.org. 

The Green Theatre Collective is founded by Windsor Terrace resident Hal Fickett. Read my story about it here.

Green Theater Company in Brooklyn Raises Money For Inaugural Season

Six months ago Windsor Terrace resident and actor Hal Fickett (pictured below) founded the Green Theatre Collective (GTC), combining his “love for theater with an interest in the green movement.”

GTC’s mission is to use minimal resources to perform captivating stories in natural environments, he explained. Each show will be performed during the day, outside in a green space, which eliminates the need for electric lighting. The actors’ costumes will be made from reused or recycled materials, and will be reused from production to production, said Fickett. Any music will be produced by instruments the actors play on stage, and all the marketing and promotion for the Green Theatre Collective is done online, through Facebook, Twitter and a blog.

The first production is slated for summer 2011, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and Fickett hopes for it to be performed in Prospect Park or a community garden.

The choice of play is significant, said Fickett. “The background is in the Forest of Arden; it’s a green and natural background,” he noted. “The play touches upon city life versus country life and the serenity that can come from living in the natural world.”

After Brooklyn, GTC will go on tour, with a definite stop in Newbury Port, Mass., Fickett’s hometown.

Fickett graduated with a bachelor’s degree in acting from Emerson College in 2006. He has acted in nearly a dozen Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. So far, Fickett has been joined on his GTC venture by Nidia Medina, who signed on as managing director of the collective, and Melanie Closs.

Right now, the group is working on raising funds to acquire and maintain a web site, apply for grant money to assist in production costs and to cover administrative costs leading up to production. They’ve set up a page on fundraising web site indiegogo.com and have scheduled a fall benefit for Tuesday, Nov. 16, at Pianos NYC in Manhattan, which will be as green as possible.

“The green movement is very relevant to where we’re at. It’s what the Earth needs for the present and the future,” said Fickett. “I wanted to put in my two cents. I’m really doing everything I can to have a green lifestyle.”

Check out the Green Theatre Collective on the web at greentheatrecollective.blogspot.com and on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter @GrnThtrClctive.

Be an ‘Urban Explorer’ At Tour de Brooklyn

This Sunday approximately 2,000 bicyclists will participate in a one-of-a-kind ride through Green-Wood Cemetery — which doesn’t normally allow bikes — during the fifth annual Tour de Brooklyn, held by biking advocacy group Transportation Alternatives (TA).

“It’s probably the highlight of the tour,” said TA spokesperson Wiley Norvell. “It’s definitely a real treat.”

The ride will begin at KeySpan park in Coney Island at 9 a.m., traveling through such South Brooklyn neighborhoods as Gravesend, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Victorian Flatbush. In addition to Green-Wood, the tour will ride through Prospect Park, where there will be a rest stop. The 23-mile tour will conclude at about 1 p.m. back in Coney Island.

Norvell says the ride follows a different route every year. Since many riders have seen neighborhoods like Park Slope and Williamsburg by bike, the south Brooklyn loop this year is “a great stretch of Brooklyn that a lot of our riders probably aren’t familiar with,” he noted.

And after the ride ends, “everyone can stay and spend the day on Coney Island at the beach.”

The important part about the Tour de Brooklyn is that it’s not a race, said Norvell. “It’s a leisurely day biking around Brooklyn,” he said. The pace is family-friendly, with “a gentle incline up and a gentle incline down.”

All 2,000 participants ride in one big group, stopping at points to let the riders in the back catch up. Cars are cleared from the streets with a “rolling closure,” during which police escorts will drive in the front and the back of the group, closing streets as the ride goes on. It’s about five minutes from the front of the group to the back, Norvell said.

Bicyclists from all over — Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia, even California — registered for the free event. In other years, online registration has sold out before the ride, but this year it sold out within 24 hours. “It’s the hottest ticket in town,” Norvell said, laughing. There will be a limited number spots for same-day registration before the tour starts, he added.

You won’t see many serious cyclists during the ride. “We tend not to get the spandex set,” Norvell said. Instead, he called the riders “urban explorers.”

“We want this to be accessible,” he continued. “What we want to inculcate is slow, civic riding. We want people to really enjoy the city around them.”

And they do. Molly Sullivan rode in her first tour in 2007 and loved it so much she volunteered for TA and is now the organization’s events coordinator.

“I had such a positive experience,” Sullivan said, describing it as a safe, family-friendly, calm ride. “It opened up bicycling in Brooklyn for me.”

She was amazed by the number of people and families that gathered for the ride. “It was a wonderful sight to see,” she said.

“The feeling I came away from the tour with was: I have to do this every day, I have to become a bike commuter,” Sullivan said. “I’ll never forget it.”

Visit www.tourdebrooklyn.org for additional information about the tour, including what to bring.

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Windsor Terrace Cohousing May Have Greenest Building in NYC

Eagle writer Linda Collins reports:

This week, Brooklyn Cohousing members decided unanimously — by consensus — to create their new home in Windsor Terrace as a low energy, environmentally friendly building.

“I think this is pretty big news. The decision was unanimous,” said spokesperson Alex Marshall, a founding member. “The consultants working on the project say it would be the most energy efficient building in New York City.”

The method of construction the group has adopted is called “Passive House” or, as it is known in Germany where it originated, “PassivHaus.”

According to Marshall, it involves a set of techniques resulting in a nearly air-tight building that simultaneously is supplied with clean, fresh air. Often heating and air conditioning is unnecessary beyond minimal levels, he said, and energy use can be a tenth of ... read more.

Rendering by Levenson McDavid Architects

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