This N.Y.C. Theater Was a Haven for Adventurous Art. Then the Archdiocese Intervened.

The Connelly Theater has suspended operations after its church landlord began more carefully scrutinizing show scripts and its general manager resigned.

The Connelly Theater in New York’s East Village has for years been a shabby but warm haven for adventurous performing arts: the play “Job,” which is now wrapping up a Broadway run; Kate Berlant’s “Kate,” a one-woman show that went on to London and California after selling out downtown; and the satire “Circle Jerk,” a Pulitzer finalist in 2021.

But over the past few weeks, the building’s landlord — the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York — began more intensely scrutinizing the content of shows whose producers were seeking to rent the space. At least three planned productions had to relocate.

Josh Luxenberg, who has been the theater’s general manager for the past decade, submitted his resignation late Friday. And early Tuesday, the Catholic school that is the intermediary between the theater and the archdiocese said it was “suspending all operations of its theater.”

Producers who have rented from the Connelly say they were aware that it was owned by the archdiocese, and that there was always a clause in their contract allowing the Roman Catholic Church to bar anything it deemed obscene, pornographic or detrimental to the church’s reputation. But only recently, they said, did the archdiocese seek to rigorously scrutinize scripts before approving rentals.

New York Theater Workshop said it was told by a bishop this month that it could not stage “Becoming Eve,” which is adapted from a memoir about a rabbi who comes out as a transgender woman, at the Connelly early next year. It is now looking for another venue.

“We had seen a range of really provocative, amazing, inspiriting, artistically rigorous shows there, so I was surprised this would be rejected,” said Patricia McGregor, the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop. “And if in the East Village of New York City we are meeting this kind of resistance, where else might this be happening?”

In a statement last week, the Archdiocese of New York did not acknowledge any changes in its approval process. “It is the standard practice of the archdiocese that nothing should take place on church-owned property that is contrary to the teaching of the church,” Joseph Zwilling, the archdiocese’s director of communications, wrote in an email. “That applies as well to plays, television shows or movies being shot, music videos being recorded, or other performances.”

The stepped up scrutiny followed an incident in Brooklyn last fall when a priest was stripped of his administrative duties after allowing the pop star Sabrina Carpenter to film an iconoclastic music video in a Catholic church.

At least two other productions have been affected by the archdiocese’s decision-making.

“Jack Tucker,” a comedy show that was a New York Times critic’s pick, planned to transfer to the Connelly last month following successful runs at SoHo Playhouse and in London. When the archdiocese still had not approved the show days before it was to begin, the producers scrambled to find another Off Broadway venue, a move that doubled their costs.

Lucas McMahon, a producer of the comedy show, said in an email that the archdiocese had “destroyed the viability of an important cultural institution” and that it was “a crushing loss to the Off Broadway and artistic community.”

The SheNYC summer theater festival, which for eight years has staged plays by female, nonbinary and transgender artists at the Connelly, was told by Luxenberg this month that it was not likely to be approved by the archdiocese, and is now trying to find an alternative for next summer.

“They made it clear that anything about abortion, reproductive rights, gender issues or sexuality will not be allowed going forward, and, given the nature of our organization, they expect that most, if not all, of our scripts will get rejected,” said Danielle DeMatteo, the founder and artistic director of SheNYC Arts, which describes itself as “a femme-led nonprofit organization that fights for gender equity in the arts and entertainment industry.”

“I’m heartbroken to lose this space,” DeMatteo said. “And I can’t imagine it being anyone’s theater now.”

Luxenberg, the theater manager who resigned on Friday, said he was unwilling to continue in the job under the current circumstances. “Remaining in this position now requires screening production proposals for any content that is objectionable to the Catholic Church,” he said in an email. “This puts me in the untenable position of becoming a censor rather than an advocate of artistic freedom.”

The shift comes at an inopportune time for the theater community. There is a growing interest in commercial and independent Off Broadway ventures but a dwindling number of available venues in the Lower Manhattan neighborhoods most sought by producers.

“Any restrictions that might prevent the space from operating at its highest level would be a devastating loss to the community,” said Randi Berry, the executive director of IndieSpace, an organization that helps independent theaters find real estate in New York. “We need spaces that allow for experimentation and risk taking.”

The loss of revenue from the rentals could also pose a challenge for the Cornelia Connelly Center, which runs the independent Catholic school that is the property’s primary tenant and that provides tuition-free education for “under-resourced girls” in fourth to eighth grade. The center leases the building that includes the school and the theater from the archdiocese.

The center’s executive director, Brianne Wetzel, said by email last week that “the Archdiocese of New York, and not our center, has sole control over the approval process of the productions that are performed there.”

Wetzel said the rental income from the theater had been used “to help offset the high cost of maintaining the operation of a full-scholarship school in Lower Manhattan.”

In a second email early Tuesday, Wetzel announced the suspension and said, “Although we do not yet know when the theater will reopen, CCC remains committed to its mission to ensure that current and future girls will receive the guidance they need to reach their educational goals.”

The Connelly, in a building that was once an orphanage, has two theaters — a main stage in a onetime choir hall that can seat nearly 200 people and a smaller theater (formerly the Metropolitan Playhouse) that can seat about 50. In recent years, and particularly since the coronavirus pandemic, it has been producing more ambitious work: This summer, Marin Ireland’s “Pre-Existing Condition,” about domestic violence, became a surprise hit in the smaller theater. Other notable Connelly productions include Ruby Thomas’s “The Animal Kingdom,” Jeremy Tiang’s “Salesman之死” and Will Arbery’s “Plano.”

In December, the Connelly is scheduled to present Kallan Dana’s “Racecar Racecar Racecar,” about a father-daughter road trip. The play is a production of the Hearth, a nonprofit theater project that supports and develops new plays by women and “artists of underrepresented genders,” and had been approved before the recent change in practice.

“We are unsure of what the future holds, but we have a commitment to artists we have hired and Kallan’s play,” Julia Greer, the Hearth’s producing artistic director, wrote in an email before the theater’s suspension of operations. “The Connelly has a rich history of presenting exciting, independently produced new plays, and it’s upsetting to hear that this is now in jeopardy.”