The Tank Throws the Gala New York Actually Needs
At The Tank’s Off-Off-Runway Gala, drag queens, pizza, the sexiest most modern roach, experimental theater, and heartfelt speeches came together to celebrate the artists still fighting to keep New York creative, strange, and alive.
The Tank’s Off-Off-Runway Gala was a celebration of what makes NYC an arts city, and a reminder that if New York wants to keep calling itself one, we have to keep paying for the unglamorous parts: rehearsal rooms, performance space, reasonable salaries, lights, AC, rent, and paint. The Tank has been doing exactly that since 2003, removing economic barriers for emerging artists and making room for experimental performance in a city that keeps getting harder to create in, supporting roughly 4,000 artists annually across 400 shows and around 800 performances with a staff of just six. SIX! That’s a miracle. So we had a gala to celebrate.
And because this is theater, everyone came dressed properly. This was a real gala: glamour, camp, a red carpet, a best-dressed contest, and a room full of people who are very much of the theater world. While I can’t say it was perfectly haute couture, the energy and outfits were definitely better and more enjoyable than the ball up the street. You know the one.
Stan Zimmerman, the night’s honoree, was a perfect embodiment of what The Tank is working toward. I mean, his résumé is undeniable: The Golden Girls, Roseanne, Gilmore Girls, the The Brady Bunch Movie films. You would think all the speeches would be about such an extraordinary career, but those accomplishments were mostly just mentioned in passing.
Again and again, people spoke about how his work made them feel seen, especially members of the queer community and people living close to grief. The most affecting remarks came from Pooya Mohseni, who described reading his Tank-produced play Right Before I Go as a suicide survivor and realizing through the work that “it is not just you.” That, more than anything, felt like the emotional center of the evening. The Tank isn’t just putting work on, it’s helping heal the loneliness we all feel.
Founder and board chair Justin Krebs described the organization’s mission as removing financial barriers from every facet of independent art. The gala’s goal was $50,000. A week of performance space costs about $5,000. Summer electric bills run around $2,500. One day of rent in Midtown is about $1,000. By the time the asks got down to hardware store bills, the point was unmistakable: New York culture is being held together by people passing the hat for air conditioning, rent, and paint. It’s honestly incredible an institution like The Tank is still standing when so many others with the same goal have fallen away.
Meghan Finn, the artistic director, said what she loves about her position at The Tank is that she gets to say yes. Artists are already making work. They need rooms, support, and people willing to let them try.
But tonight was not just about the numbers and the deeply moving emotional moments. It was also about living life to its fullest. Mariyea hosted the evening, with a couple of phenomenal drag performances mixed in. Wilson Cruz appeared as a special guest performer, who I, as a Trekkie, totally geeked out over. God, he can sing. God, he can act. He’s fantastic. There were also musical performances from Apocalypse Noir as well as Golem with his human keepers, Ethan and Garrett. Funny and heartwarming speeches were given by the fantastic and deeply stylish Paige Davis and Pooya Mohseni, all sharing their love and appreciation for Stan, who is truly one of the most talented, kind, brilliant, and bashful people I have ever met. It was a night about the incredible things that happen when we put our money where the talent and heart are.
Followed by singing, dancing, an open bar, pizza, live performances, incredible costumes, and the sexiest, most modest roach to ever grace the stage (plus I got to meet the rapper Chandler swoon), the night progressed into general revelry. I was able to meet more of the artists who will be performing soon.
This gala felt worth writing about. Not just because the room was fun, though it was. Not just because the honoree was beloved, though he clearly was. It felt worth writing about because The Tank is fighting tooth and nail to keep what makes New York City so iconic. So beautiful. A place where, if you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. Especially in this time when more and more of our creative spaces are being overtaken by giant but half-empty glass-and-metal behemoths, where the cost of simply living and creating here requires a healthy trust fund and a willingness to corporatize anything you make.
Look, everybody loves genius once it has already been anointed. THEN they want to invest. THEN they want to build. Sometimes it feels as if heart isn’t the goal in NYC anymore; profit is. However, The Tank is working much farther upstream than that, preserving the conditions under which something brilliant, strange, or necessary might appear at all. Without needing it to be consumer-ready right out of the gate, without massive profit margins in slide decks ready for investors. The Tank is investing in the artists of New York, so c’mon New York, let’s do a better job of investing in them too.