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Lyric Hall Begins Its Bounce Back

Lucy Gellman | November 26th, 2024

Lyric Hall Begins Its Bounce Back

Best Video Film & Cultural Center  |  Lyric Hall  |  Arts & Culture  |  Westville  |  Film & Video

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Top: John Cavaliere. Bottom: Rai Bruton and Teo Hernandez. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Lyric Hall was coming back to life.

Behind the bar, Rai Bruton and Teo Hernández arranged a bowl of fresh popcorn and bottles of red and white wine, their hands a steady, streamlined ballet. John Cavaliere took in the polished floors, low lighting and a table heavy with snacks, the room waiting for company for the first time in years. On a pull-down screen one room over, a young Stanley Tucci stood still outside his family’s restaurant, looking longingly down the block. 

Welcome to a new series of film screenings at Lyric Hall, a collaboration between Cavaliere and employees at Best Video Film and Cultural Center (BVFCC) in Hamden. Five years after Lyric Hall went up for sale and closed its doors to the public, Cavaliere is charting its return on Whalley Avenue, with hopes that it can become the vibrant and diverse arts hub it once was. After a test run with  Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s Big Night earlier this month, it continued with Wim Winders’ Perfect Days on Tuesday evening. More information on future screenings is available here.    

“It feels like a sacred space,” Cavaliere said on a recent Thursday, as fall sunlight streamed through the front windows. He fiddled with a lamp in the restoration shop at the front of the building. “My dream is to see the place full of people at all hours of the day and night.”

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That comeback has been months, if not years, in the making. When Lyric Hall shut its doors in 2019, Cavaliere had put the building up for sale, and thought that he was closing a chapter in the venue’s history. Performances that had filled the space, from intimate concerts to album premieres, largely went silent. He prepared to part with the building, a 1913 theater that he had poured his heart (and a good amount of elbow grease) into as it became a neighborhood spot for arts and culture.   

For a while, he said, it looked like a couple from L.A. might buy the space, he said—but the deal fell through when their offer came in significantly under asking price (Cavaliere bought the building for $180,000 in 2005; it was listed at $550,000 in 2018. In 2023, it was valued at $275,000, according to the city’s online assessment database). He realized that maybe he wasn’t going to part with it, after all. 

And then the Covid-19 pandemic hit New Haven. As businesses across the city shuttered, Cavaliere found—to his great surprise—that antique restoration was a way to keep both the building and his own livelihood afloat. To accommodate a growing list of requests, he expanded his studio space, living in one part of the building while he worked out of another. For years, the theater remained quiet, its grand chandelier forlorn, a well-loved stage strangely empty. 

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Meanwhile, the city was changing around him. After treading water during the bleakest years of the pandemic, the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas closed downtown, making it the last of several movie theaters to shutter across the city (people are still mourning the loss of the York Square Cinema, which closed in 2005).   

He started thinking about what it would look like to bring people back, however gradually. And then in August, he reconnected with Raizine (Rai) Bruton, now BVFCC’s acting executive director, who he’s known since her days as a cashier at Edge of the Woods.  

Because Lyric Hall already had a BVFCC dropbox, the partnership made sense. They took their time to figure out a format that worked. “We’re learning not to rush into it,” Bruton said.    

The partnership is a kind of kismet, he added: Cavaliere grew up in Hamden’s Spring Glen neighborhood, and he’s known and loved the space since it opened there in 1985. He’s a fan of not just Bruton, who has steadily grown her list of institutional partners, but the idea of film and cinema itself. He saw how grand and stately the performance area could be, with a large, bright white screen suspended over it. 

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“There are not a lot of places like this left in this country,” he said with an edge of mourning in his voice. “We’re losing all the theaters. They’re all closing. I think the thing about Lyric Hall is its size. Because of its size, it always feels like a full house.”

On a recent Thursday night, those plans for a comeback were in full swing. While Bruton initially imagined a different film—Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 noir The Sweet Smell of Success—Cavaliere pushed for Big Night as an antidote to post-election despair. The first time he saw the film in the 1990s, “I could relate to it,” he said with a smile. He saw something of himself in Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci), starry-eyed immigrant brothers who just wanted their restaurant to succeed.  

“It sort of reminds me of tonight,” he said as he chopped dill and scooped sour cream into a cored-out cabbage. “That’s the vibe. In the wake of this horrible election, I think people need to be reminded of art and community.”

In the main room, Bruton made sure everything was in order, chatting with Hernandez as traffic bustled by on Whalley Avenue. When she connected with Cavaliere earlier this year, she said, she was thrilled to think about Lyric Hall as a screening venue. As a lifelong cinephile, she still feels the absence of the Bow Tie, where she worked on and off for years, acutely. When a new movie comes out, she thinks about what theater the Bow Tie management would screen it in. 

“This is really about what the community wants,” she said of the screening series. “A lot of people were heartbroken when the Criterion closed—I get teary-eyed when I think about it. I always thought if I needed to go back, I could. I grew up there.”

“We really want to have a place for people in the greater New Haven area to do stuff with cinema,” she later added.  

LyricHallReboot - 4 (1)In the building’s main room, a steady trickle of people began to arrive. Many, longtime friends and supporters of Best Video, peeked into the theater to see if they could get an early guess at the film. Others made a beeline for Cavaliere, who seemed to buzz through the room effortlessly, as if he’d been made for the moment. 

At the center of the room, partners Paul Baginski and Christian DiCanio nearly buzzed with excitement as they waited for the screening room to open. After moving to New Haven 13 years ago, both became steadfast supporters of Best Video. Baginski, a professor of mathematics at Fairfield University, described himself as “a big film buff,” with a deep knowledge of and love for cinema. 

That’s a longtime love, he and DiCanio added. For years, Baginski’s mom would compile notes on movies. When the two lived in Lyon, France, several years ago, they were close to the place where the Lumière brothers—famous trailblazers in the history of cinema—got their start. Now, both make it a point to check titles out from BVFCC and flex their movie trivia muscles there each month 

It has also made them wish there was a theater in town. When the two are together in Buffalo, where DiCanio is a professor of linguistics, the two like attending the North Park Theatre, which has held onto its original Art Deco marquee.  So when they heard there would be a new collaboration, it was a no-brainer. 

“I think it will be great,” Baginski said enthusiastically.

Eva Geertz, operations manager at the Institute Library in downtown New Haven, echoed that enthusiasm. Decades ago, she worked at Best Video when she was just a high schooler in New Haven, and kept track of the shop for years afterward. In her role at the Institute Library, she’s watched a new film series take flight with the help of both Best Video and curator John Hatch. So she’s thrilled for a new collaboration—so much so that she doesn’t mind factoring in the cost of an Uber to get home.

“It’s great!” she said, adding that she’s still mourning the loss of the York Square Cinema, as well as the recent closure of the Criteron. “I fucking love movies.”

“The Gateway To Westville”

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It’s part of a larger-scale Renaissance coming to Lyric Hall, a once-bustling cabaret that has been closed to the public for half a decade. For years, Cavaliere imagined adding a sign that advertised art and antiques restoration, which he’s leaned heavily into over the last five years. During the time that the building has been closed to the public, he’s added flourishes to rooms that artists once filled like an art deco exit sign that hangs, luminescent, over the theater’s door.   

In his Cavaliere-esque way, he also wanted it to be as crafty as he is. At an auction in Berlin, he found and bought an oversized easel with two larger-than-life paintbrushes to match. Then earlier this year, he was able to secure a $2,500 grant from the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA). 

He started thinking about a sign that signalled that people were entering a creative neighborhood. According to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, 27,000 cars pass through Westville every day on their way somewhere, Cavaliere said. All of them would see that sign. The words “Welcome to Historic Westville” sprang to mind. 

“I think when the light catches it, it’s gonna be amazing,” he said. “This will be the gateway to Westville.” 

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Meanwhile—and in that way that Westville is Westville—a tight-knit arts community jumped in to help. Gar Waterman, one of the founding members of Kehler Liddell Gallery. Design Monsters founders Susan McCaslin and George Corsillo .  Eli Whitney Museum Director Ryan Paxton offered to do the lettering and finish the sign with gold leaf. Even as he designed a mock-up he could see it taking shape.

Now, he added, he intends to also bring people back to Lyric Hall one step at a time. While Best Video may be the most immediate and visible partnership, he’s also connected with Margaret Bodell of Revival Arts, a visual arts nonprofit that has stepped up as Lyric Hall’s fiscal sponsor. He’s working with WVRA to get parking permission for the lot in Edgewood Park. 

Welcome_to_Westville_SIGNHe’d love to see better park and street lighting and another Whalley Avenue crosswalk go in, so he and “can just walk uninhibited” without the fear of traffic violence (Whalley is not known for pedestrian friendliness). He’s already dreaming of recitals, plays and concerts that could take place in the building, on that too-quiet stage that once buzzed with joyful noise.

He credited the artist Peter Wickeden, who did a glass panel for Cavaliere over a decade ago, for restoration on the outside of the building. 

“Lyric Hall is the biggest antique that I’ve ever restored,” he said. “It makes people happy. I’ve got big plans for the building.”