The Egg

I watched this performance center being built from my office back in the ‘70s. It was amazing then and is amazing now.
There are two performance rooms in the above ground part of the structure, the larger Kitty Carlisle Hart venue and the smaller Lewis A. Swyer venue. Every seat in both theaters offers a full, unobstructed view of the stage. The acoustics in both theaters are excellent.
Below the Egg structure is a large convention hall.

Super cool performing arts center. Great views and even greater history to learn about that’s based at this magnificent piece of art.
It wasn’t too crowded at all today so for that I’m very thankful. Empire State Plaza sits right aside it all there is plenty of leg room to walk around or have a quiet picnic spot.

It’s a beautiful venue built last century. The problem isn’t the venue. It’s the staff and or management. Where do I begin? The bathrooms were void of any kind of paper towels. Even though I saw the same bald janitor looking guy hanging around the lobby.
This venue seats 1400 people and they use elevators to get the people up into the egg.
My $ 7 bottle of bud light was offensive. Especially since they had just one register open for all 1400 people. They ran out of the good beer before the show even started.
Ok so no food no drink no smiling inside the seating area.
Hundreds of guards continuously roving back and forth with flashlights making sure people are subdued and mundane. NO PICS OR YOUR GONE!!!
Overall it just sucked. Again, the venue was gorgeous, of course it was built before the nonsense we live in today, but the management sucks.
I won’t be back.

Creepy Spaceship from outer space coming to evade Albany… Nah some pretty cool architecture from the 70s by a cool cat that did most of downtown Albany and UA.
When inside though for a show note: DO Not Drink, you will get vertigo

The Egg is a great place to take in a summer show. Make sure to check it out! If you’re interested in their bathrooms and how clean they are, check out my blog:
I rate bathrooms in NYS on their cleanliness! The Egg was one of my recent posts!

The egg is a performing area for children and adults… There are five floors inside the egg … Elevator is big security inside guarding the elevator… Weird thing I got soo lost in there I was on the fourth floor sneak a peak at the children performing there were people selling items and foods… Then when I went to the lobby it was all the way on the other side of the egg room around and saw a few artifacts which is pretty cool… went out and lead me to the museum it’s was a fun roller coster… there air conditioner was defiantly on point… Too bad I was in a hurry to go back to NYC would defiantly want to see my cousian perform that day !

I was here when the hostages were released. Yes, this was way back… take your time machines. Carter’s presidency was ending, and the sharp shooting wild western actor was becoming president. And apparently there was some back door deal.
I have no idea but I remember clearly being in school, watching a play here, and then they stopped everything on stage, and everything went silent. Then they announced over the loudspeakers that the hostages were released. This was that big of a deal.
More recently I’ve seen my sister & brother’s kids do performances here, and that’s always a treat! Great space, if perhaps rather underutilized. Ah the suburbs have forgotten about their cities…

I mean, really, how can you dislike the Egg.
The show I saw last night was so incredibly intimate and fun, I think you just have to by a generally naysaying person to not love shows at the Egg.
Pro-​Tip. Relax, stay in your seat, allow the crowd to herd itself out then leaving is much more pleasant.

Stopped to see The Led Zeppelin Experience at The Egg this weekend. I had been to The Egg a few times before, but the experience is a lot different these days. From ordering tickets to our arrival there are so many rules that are made clear that you kind of feel like you’re going to be put out. But, the truth is, almost all of the rules are ignored.
For example, must show photo ID and be prepared to allow for a search of your vehicle when parking. Neither happened. There were two shows that evening starting roughly the same time, we were told we needed to go to the correct elevator. Two minutes later, they let you use whichever elevator you could get a space to enter. We were directed to the proper side of the theater we had to enter. While it certainly is more convenient to listen, there was nothing mandatory about which entrance you used to get to the theater at all.
The theater is really comfortable. The seats are spacious and there is a lot of room for your feet. Even the pains in the butt we were seated near who entered and left at least three times through the show were able to do so without too much bumping into people. I think the show would have been perfectly visible from anywhere in the space, it is really remarkable how the layout feels so close.
I do not know if it is a function of the venue or the show, but the audience was really a collection of all types. From older people (some in ties and others reliving their hippy days with tie dye) to those who obviously have not been alive to know Led Zeppelin as a band. I loved sitting outside the theater entrance and just watching people.
In all, The Egg is a very comfortable and convenient place to see a show. I’ve decided to keep an eye on what new shows are coming. We will definitely come back when something catches our eye.

My first rule of Unilocal is to never write a review immediately after a negative experience and to try to remain dispassionate, but I’m going to break my own rule for The Egg. This review is for the «business», not the «space». The performance space is meritorious and speaks for itself. But if experiencing art is about losing yourself in the performance, it’s fairly impossible to do when the ugly lingering whiff of sullen and rude employees spoils the day.
Thus it has been to both our trips to the Egg, and yet even so I wasn’t going to bother reviewing them, until one of their seemingly endless series of sour and discourteous staff saw fit to bark at one of my younger kids today when we were there trying to navigate a children’s event, all for the great sin of having take two steps in the wrong direction off an elevator. Yes, two steps, for which he was yelled at to go the other way as if he’d tried to cut into the line at the ladies room.
One might accuse me of having a thin skin, but this was in the middle of a series of snarling instructions from staff that make the ushering staff at Yankee Stadium look like they’re from Mother Teresa’s orphanage. At one point, trying to get from the convention center space up to a performing space at the Egg, we were directed to go up an escalator that was out of order. This not possible, we asked two staff, both of whom directed us to the same out of order escalator. Then we were shunted around to an elevator, where the operator (yes, an operator) refused to let us off on the level we wanted to get off at; then told by two different staff at the level we did get off on to go in opposite directions, the second pointing us back to the first usher. Asking accusingly «Where are YOU going?» the second time around, instead of «May I help you?» we were put on another elevator. At this point we decided to simply bag it and leave, but then we entered the second phase of Egg-​hell, wherein my kid was yelled at for simply taking two steps the wrong way towards a door to another performance, and then we got sent on _​another circle_​up and down the building as we were simply trying to exit. Yes, we finally got out of this moebius strip of jackanapes.
The first time we went to the venue we were treated to surly and curt treatment by the staff at both the box office and while being ushered in, for a higher end performance, as if we were idiots for not knowing our way around a place we had never visited before. I dismissed it at the time as one of those things, but clearly we only had seen the tip of the iceberg.
So, our formal complaint to management pending, you’re getting as few stars as I can dish out, Egg. There’s no excuse for such rudeness to patrons, most especially for a non-​profit arts space, and I don’t care if it’s a big noisy kids’ event, and it is utterly, utterly inexcusable to be so rude to a child most especially when that child is neither misbehaving nor doing anything other than trying to follow instructions given to him by a series of obviously befuddled adults. Shame on you. The yolk’s on you.
Follow-​up: having submitted two written complaints, politely phrased, to management, in the traditional postal-​letter format, and left a phone message, and not having been given the courtesy of a call-​back much less a formal response, my obvious conclusion is they don’t give a damn. They have a near-​monopoly on performing space for a certain category of act, and that combined with the aloof organization clearly has conspired to create an arrogant management tier. We will resist the temptation even for our favorite performers.

«You really cant miss it, its the only building that looks like an egg for miles!» haha great directions.
Architecturally speaking it’s really cool, i have never seen anything quite like it before. From outside one wonders where the hell is the stage and seating?
I believe you can park in a private lot or a fee, i just parked a block away on the road and walked. If you park on the road in Albany make 100% sure their are no signs. I swear Albany PD gets 99% of their funding for parking violations.
Surprisingly the place looked bigger from inside. Very cool, very ‘artsy’ as it should be.
I saw Dave Attell, who was funny as hell. The place is only as good as the performer inside :)

The Egg is one of my favorite venues. It’s spacious, comfortable and yet so intimate. I doubt there’s a bad seat in the house. You really feel so close to the performers. The sound in here is good too.
It’s a little confusing riding up the elevators from the garage — and god forbid you take the stairwells — that’s an easy way to get lost too! I do like that the second elevator up has an operator who will assist you.
Try not to drink too much before a show — the curved walls always give me a bit of a vertigo spell and drinking exacerbates this problem.

It was not lost on me that the Superstars of Belly dance choose the Egg, the embodiment of the feminine to hold their performance. I actually went to a different performance and just wanted to see what this was all about.
I was greeted with the clutch of the most gorgeous women I’d ever beheld. My eyes saw movements that suggested these sisters of Eve were capable of things that I will dream about for years to come and not about to talk about in this review.
Each woman undulated with the soul of Aphrodite. I surfed the wave of testosterone that flooded my body in answer to their lunar pull until my heart needed a break.
During intermission I discovered the majority of attendees to this performance were in in a belly dance class or teaching one. Needless to say, this was the most lovely audience I’d ever been apart of. I ran into Brook and the cd and clothing table. She was there charging the Brookness Venus battery for her twice weekly class and to see her stars.
It was also near the full moon. It was almost too much for one man to bear.

I love this venue. You feel so up close and personal with the performers. I saw a ballet there a couple years back and it was the best experience at a venue I have had yet

This is kinda interesting how this building came to be.
I took the tour there about Albany. I have to admit that I kinda
enjoyed it! The tour — when I went there & took it many years
back — it was free. But it has been a few years since I have taken
the tour there so I have no idea if they charge now.
But I did have a nice time when I went there.

If you’re not going to see a performance, you can’t usually explore the Egg on your own — you have to be with a tour. Unless you’re me, and you go poking around until you find an elevator button that works, and happen to get in it with a legitimate tour group that will let you tag along. Anyhow, I’m not sure how you get a tour or how much it costs.
The Hart theater inside, the upper level theater, is pretty impressive-​looking. Outside the theater proper there is a sprawling lobby area with a bunch of chairs to sit in. The wall is made of wood, and sound bounces off of the wood so that when you’re standing in the right place, a person can hear you really on the other side of the room as if they’re next to you.
It also has a pretty neat history — Kitty Carlisle had something to do with its creation.
My only complaint is that I wish there were some kind of observation deck in it. It’s not the kind of thing that could really use one, but I like funny shaped objects that you can look out of.

The upscale performance space for high art, dance, concerts, etc. Combined with Pepsi Arena it gives Albany something to say in terms of large scale entertainment. I’ve performed here for the Chinese Community Center Wing Chun program, and let me say doing cartwheels to goddamn Conan the Barbarian soundtrack was cringeworthy. However, its a terrific space, obviously it looks fantastic (it looks like well most of an egg) and its great driving down the highway and seeing it in full glory. Its a dark, sloping space, the stage is fairly huge and the acoustics aren’t bad, but they aren’t the greatest either. Their programs are always pretty top notch.