Need better entertainment options than going to bars all the time? Wan to legitimize that part of your OKCupid profile where you say you’re “into art”? Have I got a proposition for you: a season’s subscription to BAM. A subscription will not only get you discount tickets for you and a friend and make you feel cultured, you actually will be cultured, because it’s not like you’re going to buy all those theater tickets and then not go, right?
Best of all, subscribing is easy. It doesn’t involve any sort of overhead fee, you just go online, pick at least 4 shows to see, and boom, you’re instantly qualified as a “subscriber.”
If you buy tickets to 4 or more shows, you get 20% off of the price of each seat. 7 or more shows gets you a 30% discount. An additional perk is that you get bring-a-friend ticket prices that are just a few dollars more than the discounted price, so you might even get to be a sugar-daddy for all your artsy or art-curious friends.
So what’ll it actually run you? I got tickets to 8 shows and slots in 2 master classes (between $20 and $25 and hosted by the artists that perform at BAM) for $190. Which means that even after the what-is-this-bullshit service/handling fees, all my purchases averaged out to under $20 each ticket. Plus, while single tickets are on sale now, subscription packages have been available since August 12, and are available before single tickets go on sale each season, allowing you to beat the rush.
And there will be a rush each time, considering what you’re in for. The “Next Wave Festival” is BAM’s seasonal offering of US and world premieres by some of the best in the biz. On the acting side, the New Wave stages have seen the likes of John Turturro and Kevin Spacey. The dance companies of Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown and Ohad Naharin are regulars, along with theatre directors Robert Wilson, Peter Brook and Sam Mendes.
But name-dropping isn’t the only justification for investing in their season. After all, theater is just as much about new voices as it is about the veteran ones. And this season includes, to name a few things: an immersive “real time” evening in the life of a single Polish woman, a series of vaudevillian vignettes on weightlessness, ballet inspired by Boyz in the Hood, and a percussion music concert about gun control.
And if nothing else, a BAM subscription is just the excuse you need to party all night in the disco-lit upstairs mezzanine of a Fort Greene opera house that’ll give any Brooklyn beer hall a run for its money.