Bay Street’s Future

 The future of the Bay Street Theatre will be discussed next Thursday night from 7 to 9, with all interested members of the public welcomed to join. The year-round, not-for-profit theater’s management and board members will explain their plan for relocation to a permanent home in 2013.

 The theater has been a fixture on Long Wharf, on the corner of Bay and Main Streets in Sag Harbor, for 20 years, and has hosted well-known entertainers, arts education programs, films, and local music events. It was also a venue for Sag Harbor’s inaugural American Music Festival last fall, as well as fund-raising events for natural disaster victims in Haiti and Japan.

 Tracy Mitchell, the theater’s executive director, explained in a release that the theater must either own its own space or hold a very long-term lease, so that people will know that Bay Street will remain a part of the East End arts community.  Despite concerns about the future of the theater and of the large and prominent space it occupies in the village, Murphy Davis, one of the theater’s artistic directors, has an “onward and upward” outlook, saying in a release that “change is inevitable and challenges always bring out the best and the most creativity in people.”