14th Annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts (Event Over)

Can’t afford to spend your holiday weekend in some exotic clime this year? Nevermind! Laugh at the Depression with us by luxuriating in the Arts instead. Spend your Stay-cation saturating your senses, exercising your funny bone and going for an intellectual joy ride at the still free and more fabulous than ever, LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS. And if you’re a Tourist trapped by Up and Midtown Prices, break free with LES’s Free Breakout Entertainment and culture. It is what the Real New York has always really been about.

Join our literally hundreds of performers as they gather at Theater for the New City to gift you with their time and talent at our 14th Annual LES. As always, we will sing hosannas to the Lower East Side and East Village’s Artistic Past, dig its Present and sneak preview its Artistic Future.

Classical Theater, Yiddish Theater, Vaudeville, Burlesque and the nascent Silent Film Industry all flourished here. George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Yip Harburg, Eddie Cantor, the Adlers, Molly Pican, Charlie Parker, Eugene O’Neill, Garcia Lorca, Mark Twain, the list goes on and on. They all lived and created here at one time. Now, it’s our time to both remember them and continue their tradition by continuing to create.

The LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS is Theater, Music, Dance Comedy, Poetry, Film, Video and the Fine Arts as well. Nearly all the Theater and Dance Groups in our area help to make up this cultural cornucopia.