ShowRoom cinema featured in Sunday New York Times
Article cites increased cultural offerings in downtown Asbury Park
The New York Times takes note in its Sunday edition tomorrow of the new ShowRoom Cinema on Cookman Avenue.
In an article entitled “Cinematic Polish for an Evolving Shore Town”, Times reporter Tammy La Gorce writes that the ShowRoom is “not the sort of experience the typical multiplex is likely to replicate.”
The story was posted today on the New York Times website.
ShowRoom owners Nancy Sabino and Michael Sodano [shown above] opened their new three-screen cinema in late November in a building they purchased in 2011. The two launched the original ShowRoom across the street in 2009 in a rented space.
La Gorce wrote that the ShowRoom is part of the growing number of cultural offerings in downtown Asbury Park. Her article also cites the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art and the Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation which opens its Cookman Avenue storefront today.
From the Times article:
Ms. Sabino and her partner, Michael Sodano, introduced the ShowRoom in 2009 in a 2,000-square-foot space across the street from its current location. Last year, they set in motion a plan to expand that would double their space and add two more theaters. Their new building opened in late November, after a construction project that cost around $500,000 and was delayed by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. The biggest theater now seats 75, the second-biggest 25 and the smallest, where the tasting was held, 12.
“Our opening date was pushed back by a few weeks, but in effect everyone was so consumed with the aftermath of the storm no one was going to come out anyway,” Ms. Sabino said.
Business since then has been “good — so far, so good,” said Mr. Sodano, 60, with patrons coming to see independent and art-house films like “Searching for Sugar Man,” “Mahler on the Couch” and “Chasing Ice.”
They are the sorts of films people would “normally have to go to New York to see,” said Dennis Carroll, 70, of Asbury Park, a ShowRoom regular…But films that appeal to those who favor such releases over the latest superhero franchise are not the only draw.
The multiple theaters lend themselves to live performances — “readings, theatrical performances, poetry slams, comedy,” Mr. Sodano said. Though the ShowRoom had them before, it can now host a live event at the same time as a screening, for example. By late December, the ShowRoom had presented a standup comedy show, the first in a planned series, and a discussion with Andrew Demirjian, a communication professor at Monmouth University, and his students in the 75-seat theater.
“This is the type of community that supports that kind of programming,” Mr. Sodano said. In weeks to come, the theater plans to show Oscar-nominated short films and a series of food-related documentaries that will tie into promotions with local restaurants.
Click here for the full Times article about the ShowRoom. For more information about the ShowRoom Cinema, click here for a link to their website.
