Making Waves: Talking Arts with Sag Harbor Mayor, Bay Street Theater Director & Sag Harbor Cinema Leader

In this episode of new Dan’s Papers video series Making Waves, Publisher Victoria Schneps and Emmy-Award winning newscaster Jane Hanson interview Sag Harbor Mayor James Larocca, Bay Street Theater Executive Director Tracy Mitchell and Sag Harbor Cinema Artistic Director Guilia D’Agnolo Vallan.

The trio shared the latest developments in the iconic waterfront village’s arts scene during their conversation at The American Hotel in Sag Harbor.

Sag Harbor Leaders Discuss the Arts

“The biggest change that I’ve seen in these 20 years is that the arts have grown both by deliberate acts, planning folks, and just by the organic way which arts communities form,” Larocca said. “We are tourism, recreation and arts as an economy now and it is booming.”

Vallan noted how the cinema renovated to tap into that market after rebuilding from a devastating 2016 fire.

“What I really wanted to do was to have a theater that was popular to all the community but was also specialized and could show rarified programming,” she said. “That’s why we have three different spaces.”

Mitchell hopes Bay Street Theater can follow suit with its yet-to-be-approved plans for a permanent home on the waterfront property it purchased.

“We’re working on it,” she said. “We haven’t gotten to the point where we’re out publicly with another design, but we are back to the drawing board to make sure that it abides by as many of the new codes as we can possibly do.” The ultimate goal is to have the space to “to develop new work, which is what a professional regional theater does as a core part of its mission.”

Learn more about Sag Harbor’s arts scene by watching the Making Waves video above!

Sponsored by Enzo Morabito Team at Douglas Elliman Real Estate