A Fortress Fit for the Bard

Imagine a home for Shakespeare at the foot of the Hudson in a theater that resembles the original Globe Theater in London. This is the vision of the New Globe Theater on Governors Island.

What started as a dream a few years ago has turned into a firm proposal with a design by architect Lord Norman Foster (currently on exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.) and a business plan. There’s also a group of A-list supporters, but that is not enough to make the project happen.

The future of the theater is in the hands of the National Park Service, which controls the fortress out of which the New Globe would be built. The project would move alongside the redevelopment of Governors Island, overseen by Leslie Koch at the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation; the corporation has no say over what happens to the Park Service land.

The New Globe Theater is taking its dream to the people with an advocacy campaign that replaces its early, dreamy slogans with a plain and urgent one: “Save the New Globe Proposal.”

To rally support, it held a cocktail party Monday where the actor F. Murray Abraham gave a moving speech about why guests should support the project.

“Are we really serious about this thing when we say we want to do something to better humanity?” Mr. Murray, currently starring in “The Jew of Malta,” said.

He described the theater as one of the only venues left where people directly talk to one another. “Everywhere we walk down the streets of New York City, people don’t ever speak to one another. They’re talking on the phone. What theater represents is community.”

He relayed one of his grandfather’s fables. A sparrow heard that the sky was falling, so he instantly lay down on his back. The king’s horseman came by and asked him what he was doing.

“I heard that the sky was falling, so I’m holding it up,” said the sparrow.

“Do you really think you can do that with those little legs?”

“I do what I can,” the sparrow said.

agordon@nysun.com