Manhattan Escorts: Big BAM Theory
In its own literature, BAM defines its role as a “home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas.” Adventurous today, indeed, but in the 1860s this fearlessness was far from BAM’s reality.
In the late 1800s, when BAM was born, the theater world in New York at large was becoming more controversial, with members of different social classes clashing in riots in downtown Manhattan.
According to Lehner, BAM was the “conservative backlash” to those events, and steered away from topical pieces.
This is “just after a time when we’re having prostitution in the balcony of theaters, so there a lot of associations that theaters are low brow,” Lehner said. “For the first year at BAM, the trustees said, ‘We are having no theater whatsoever, this is just going to be for music.’”