Elite NYC school with superstar alums cuts theater program as vendor and city point fingers

The curtain is coming down on a much-lauded theater program at a prestigious performing arts school in Manhattan — which counts A-listers Claire Danes, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Allen White, Alicia Keys and Britney Spears among its alumni.

The coveted program at the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell’s Kitchen, run in partnership with the performing art group Waterwell, is being cut on April 12 due to “unprecedented” budget cuts, Waterwell’s director of education wrote in an email to parents and students.

“As you all know, the city budgets have been incredibly stretched since the pandemic and the impacts on the school budgets continue to have ripple effects,” Heather Lanza wrote in the missive.

“Because of this, Waterwell was notified by Principal Dyer that we would be receiving an unprecedented 20% budget cut from our original work plan for the 2023-2024 school year,” she continued.

Lanza then announced that the school’s Drama One Showcase, High School Juries, and Middle School Spring Concert were to be canceled.

“This is a devastating amount of money for our small organization, and because of this cut, we are left with no choice than to end the program early for this school year,” she said.

Once starry-eyed students lamented the “incredibly heartbreaking” news.

“We go to a performing high school, not a school for academics. The entire reason everybody is here is because of the arts. When that gets cut, what’s the point?,” asked one fired-up 16-year-old girl who wakes up early and commutes to the school from Coney Island for its “stellar arts education.”

A friend chimed in “I’m really gonna feel it.”

“Our creative liberty, that’s the reason we come to this school so that we can be young artists,” the fellow 16-year-old said. “Now it’s been revoked which feels incredibly heartbreaking.”

A teacher also bemoaned, “Budget cuts are a b—h.”

However, school officials insisted that budget cuts weren’t to blame — and it was proposed changes to their contract with Waterwell.

“There was a contract in place with this partner for the school,” Superintendent Gary Beidleman said during a Thursday morning press conference. “They have been a partner for a long time. And the price of the services changed during the school year.

“It wasn’t a budget cut that occurred, it was a change in the contract or a proposed change in the contract,” he continued.

“So the school had funds to partner with the organization and services were delivered throughout the school year and then mid-year the partner needed additional funds to continue the service.”

Outside the school on Thursday morning, a 14-year-old drama student worried about the future of his dramatic career.

“To me it’s really unfortunate because it’s my first year here and now I don’t get to perform my juries which are part of our final performances of the year where we get to showcase all work to like families and a bunch of audience and it’s just like really sad that we don’t get a chance to perform for like other people,” the student said.

“We are just not gonna have PA, unfortunately,” he added. “After April 12, they are not completely sure what they are gonna do.”

A 15-year-old freshman who was hoping to study acting said that without the program, the school would no longer be a top performing arts destination.

“It’s very frustrating,” she said. If the program is cut “it will be just another performing arts school. I could go to a good academic nearby me without arts. I commute every day like an hour to come here to be a part of this program.

“After the 12th what’s the point of coming to this school if there is no good acting program. It’s acting, you know, you can’t have musical theater without theater.”

A middle school student who was on a Zoom call Wednesday night with parents and Lanza recalled that it was “chaotic to say the least.”

“There was a bunch of controversies and there was a bunch of parents asking questions; they’re like ‘Why weren’t we informed of this sooner,’ and she literally said ‘We didn’t know until we told you,’” the girl claimed.

Students had launched a fundraising page that had raised some $36,000 by Thursday morning, a third of its goal.

The effort got a publicity boost when White, known for his TV roles on “The Bear” and “Shameless” shared the link on Instagram after texting a former teacher to make sure it was legit, according to Chalkbeat.

“We are the 7th-grade students at The Professional Performing Arts School in NYC. Due to unfortunate budget cuts our performing arts program was cut short and will be ending early in April for both middle school and high school!” the page read.

“This affects hundreds of students and we are heartbroken to have such a horrible thing happen. Please help donate to bring back our program that brought so many students joy, and made their dreams come true!”

Department of Education officials, meanwhile, tried to assure the community that things would continue without or without Waterwell.

“We have great teachers at the school who can deliver that service and who have been working with the partner over a number of years,” Superintendent Beidleman said.

“The former principal at the school has been working with the new principal at the school. They identified those teachers, identified the curriculum, they’re definitely prepared to move forward with students.

“There is a plan in place and students will continue to receive those services and we’ll see some Oscar winners in the next 10 years.”