Report To The Community 2022

there’s so much to look forward to!
a message from
john schreiber
President and Chief Executive Officer
As the boss of a performing arts center, my days are a
delightful, dizzying marathon. Every day there are meetings,
conversations, urgent phone calls and the occasional inspirational
opportunity to drop in on a rehearsal, a sound check in
progress or an arts education class full of young people.
And NJPAC, of course, is not just any performing arts center — we’re
an anchor institution that prides itself on entertaining visitors at our
theaters, sure, but also on delivering performances in every corner
of our community and beyond, and using the power of the arts to
serve an ever-growing constituency in new and exciting ways.
All of that keeps us hopping!
But now and then, just for a moment, I’m able to pause and look at
what all that activity, all that planning, plus the support and advice
from a huge circle of supporters and advisors, has wrought.
Sending you this little book — a chronicle of all we have
accomplished this past year, and more importantly, all we
have done to ensure that NJPAC is of even greater service to its
community in the decades to come — is one of those moments.
This season, NJPAC’s 25th anniversary, has been a time
of unparalleled evolution for this organization. We have
set the Arts Center firmly on a path that will expand its
work, its reach and its impact for years to come.
We’re building an Arts Center for the next generation — of
arts lovers, of students, of Newarkers — and this Report to
the Community explains how. Consider it your roadmap
to the Arts Center’s growth over the next 25 years.
The future — and how NJPAC will evolve alongside its
home city — is what’s guiding our decisions as we plan
everything from the concerts on our main stages, to how to
best use every inch of our downtown Newark campus.
And the future is very, very exciting.
There are four main branches to our approach to how we
will position this Arts Center to thrive in the years to come,
and simultaneously do as much as it can for the city and
the state we serve as an anchor cultural institution:
• While we continue to present and produce world-class
performances on our main stages, ones that speak to the
incredible diversity of Newark and New Jersey, we will also
focus on creating new content that can be performed on stages
across the country or can be shared via film, broadcast and
virtual events. These new productions — like our beloved holiday
property The Hip Hop Nutcracker — will not only serve as what
my colleague David Rodriguez calls “an artistic endowment
fund” for the Arts Center, but they will advance Newark’s growth
as a center for creative individuals and artistic innovation.
• In our Center for Arts Education and, soon, in our new
Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center,
we will continue to advance an innovative, collaborative
and supportive method of teaching through the arts.
Mentoring, career counseling, the teaching of social
and emotional skills and the support of social workers
are all part of a new approach to using arts training to
help citizen-artists grow and tell their own stories.
• The redevelopment of our campus will create an exciting
new neighborhood of homes, shops, cultural venues and
educational spaces that bring this city’s downtown to vibrant
new life on days, nights and weekends. And we’re expanding
into the South Ward by bringing Lionsgate Newark to the city,
building New Jersey’s first purpose-built film and TV studio
on the site of the abandoned Seth Boyden housing project.
When it opens in 2025, it will offer new jobs, apprentice and
internship opportunities for Newark’s young people and bring
the excitement of the TV and film industries to our hometown.
• And finally, we are redoubling our work in the community,
bringing the performing arts off our stages and into
neighborhoods across the city through a variety of initiatives,
from our new Arts & Well-Being programming vertical that
will advance and study the use of the arts to boost physical
and mental health, to our new ArtsXChange initiative that
will establish performance and arts education spaces around
the city in partnership with established community groups.
All of these projects are already underway. But each effort is poised
to grow and expand its reach exponentially in the years to come.
Here is your guide to the results of all that strategic, intentional
planning. We can’t wait to see these plans become the Arts Center’s
new reality — and we are so glad that you’re part of the NJPAC
family that has made this remarkable evolution possible.
All good wishes,
John Schreiber
We’re building an
Arts Center for the
next generation —
of arts lovers,
of students, of
Newarkers — and
this Report to the
Community explains
how. Consider it your
roadmap to the Arts
Center’s growth over
the next 25 years.
njpac.org 3