When Headmaster Oscar Cohen decided to step down a few years ago after more than three decades at Lexington School for the Deaf, he wanted to leave the Jackson Heights institution with a parting gift. The Bronx native decided to replace the torn stage curtains in the school’s auditorium. For funding, he turned to his childhood friend Ralph Lifshitz, better known to the world as Ralph Lauren, the fabled fashion and home-furnishings designer. John Collins, a former Lexington middle school teacher who now serves as media specialist and performing arts center manager, recalls that Ralph said, “I can do a whole lot better.”
Lauren and his wife had the auditorium, which had been built in the 1960s, gutted and reconstructed the theater from the ground up. The $2 million renovation to what is now called the Ralph and Ricky Lauren Center for the Performing Arts left the students and the surrounding community with one of the most high-tech and accessible theaters in the borough. The 427-seat performing arts center, which opened in December 2003 after 2 1/2 years of construction, has carpet and curtains dyed in the official “Ralph Lauren blue” and boasts the latest in technology.
Four plasma-screen televisions hang from the walls to transmit simultaneous interpretation or closed captioning of on-stage action for the audience. Three cameras mounted throughout the center can channel shots of everything on stage and in the gallery to the plasma screens. The control booth offers a full view of the action below and has computerized controls and switches for video, audio and lighting.
Next to the control booth is a simultaneous interpretation room. From there, audio interpretation for Lexington’s students and their family members can be beamed to infrared-equipped headsets in the gallery. Every technical station, behind the stage and in the control booth, is networked with closed-circuit televisions and cameras, allowing stagehands to use sign-language to communicate. This opens the behind-the-scenes production process to the school’s deaf students. “That’s the thing that makes the place really unique,” Collins said. “I don’t believe there’s any other theater that has that.”
David Tein, Lexington’s development director, said Lauren had “recognized the power of the performing arts in the deaf community.” Designed to benefit both the school and the community, the Ralph and Ricky Lauren Center for the Performing Arts is in an ideal location two blocks from the Grand Central Parkway and close to LaGuardia Airport. It has already been used by orchestral groups, the city Department of Education, rock bands with special lighting effects for deaf audience members and a touring deaf theater group. “Everything is included here,” Collins said. “Just add talent and we provide everything else.”
