Kupferberg Center for The Arts

I really enjoyed this simple theatre Its just perfect. Plus you get free parking come on people you are so lucky to have that amenity. The seats are comfy and i’m a big guy, I recommend an aisle seat.

This small simple theatre is a step above a high school auditorium. The seats are comfy and sound system adequate. Parking here is not easy with tiny lots that fill quickly. Arrive early use the lots or plan in parking in the street 3 blocks away.

I came to the Colden Auditorium for a concert with the fam on a Saturday night (yes, I’m THAT cool). Doors were to open at 8p but we went in at 8:20p. It was rainy and cold so this was a big deal. None of the staff had the WiFi password for guests to use, and when I went to the front of the stage to sing along with the singer LIKE A NORMAL CONCERT GOER, security threatened to arrest me. When I acted like I didn’t speak English and continued singing along, I could see the smoke coming out of his ears. This auditorium made me so thankful for the Skirball Center’s auditorium.

5 stars for the Billy Cosby performance, 3 stars for the venue.
My first experience was driving right through the gates of Queens College, only to be stopped and sent to another guard who gave me the most roundabout directions to essentially make a U-​turn and drive around the block (but instead drove two miles and ten minutes out of the way to reach the same parking lot).
Parking is sparse, so arrive early to secure a spot in the lot directly across from the theatre. I was lucky and nabbed one, but I saw people walking quite a ways after the show.
Colden Auditorium itself looks like a larger high school venue and I was unimpressed by the facilities. This was especially disappointing after seeing the beautifully modern façade and lobby.
It was worth it, though, to see wonderful programming and a comedic legend. I’d be back for the big names, but I won’t come back for anything else.

I came here one Saturday evening for a performance by the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe. If you are not familiar with this performance group, it is a performance group made up entirely of performers with disabilities, and it is famous for doing the «Thousand Hand Bodhisattva Dance», which is performed by dancers who are all deaf. You can see the dance on youtube:
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But anyway, this review is not about the performance troupe. This review is on the Colden Center. The size of the auditorium, including seating and the stage, is obviously designed for local performances. It’s great for that purpose, but doesn’t always do the job when it is trying to accommodate a group such as the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe, which has performed at the closing ceremoney of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But this is not the reason for my 2-​star rating. Apparently the performance troupe was selling tickets via a local NY Chinese American company which may have even been set up for the purpose of selling tickets for this performance. They were selling tickets online and at certain businesses in the Chinese neighbourhoods. If you bought tickets online, you could mention your name and pick up the tickets at the event.
Or you could also buy tickets when you arrived at the event, like I did. I don’t know what kind of deal they had with the Colden Center, but apparently, if you bought tickets at the event itself, you had to buy via the ticketing office for the Colden Center instead of the ticket table that this Chinese company had set up in front of the auditorium. I assumed if you bought tickets this way, all the revenue will go directly to the Colden Center and the Chinese company would have no share in it whatsoever.
I had no idea about this and asked a Chinese lady at the ticket table if I was to give my money to her for a ticket. She took my money and while she was about to give me a ticket, a manager that works for the Colden Center came on over and basically yelled at her as if she was a child for having taken my money. She was scary. I almost wanted to tell her to calm down, she was so angry. She ended this talking-​down-​to by telling a security guard to watch the Chinese lady and kick her out if she took money again. Whether or not the Chinese lady knew she was doing wrong, at that point, was irrelevant to me. This manager for the Colden Center was supposedly a professional and she lost her professionalism by the way she talked down to somebody working for a business partner.