Lucky for us all, there was no intermission. The Drama Book Shop went straight to the second act with its grand reopening. This specialty shop, a mecca for the theatre community for the past 100 years, was at risk of closing permanently, due to high rents.
Thanks to Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeffrey Seller and James L. Nederlander, there will be no final curtain call for this beloved specialty shop. The new location, on West 39th Street, was designed by David Korins. If these names sound familiar, it’s because they are, respectively, the director, the creator, the producer, the theatre owner, and the scenic designer of the Broadway hit Hamilton.
Kail and Miranda share history with The Drama Book Shop. In the early 2000’s, Kail started a theatre group in the bookstore, and Miranda worked on his first hit stage production of In The Heights, which had its film debut on June 4th at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. They could not allow the bookstore to go out of business, so they, along with the rest of the team purchased the store and relocated it.
The beautiful design of the store includes replicas of set pieces from Hamilton and makes one feel like they are entering a particularly special place, but the real magic will happen in the back of the store, where patrons are invited to sit down and create. The Drama Book Shop will continue on to be “the room where it happens”.
