Diane Eber was a college student when she saw her first show at “The Egg,” the brutalist concrete oval that bursts from Albany’s skyline of government office buildings. And more than the music, she remembers the space.
“I was like, 'Whoa, we are going to go inside that crazy building?'” she said on a recent tour. “And my other memories were honestly of it, feeling very prim and proper.”
Now Eber, as executive director of what’s formally called the Empire State Plaza Performing Arts Center, is finishing up a $19.5 million renovation — the first major overhaul since the Egg opened in 1978.
She hopes the glow-up will change the Egg from a place to sit and watch shows to a forum for immersive works — or just a quirky place for people in Albany and around the state and region to enjoy. The unique space itself should become a touchstone for performances. And experiences.
“Vortex,” she said of the new goal. “You’ve entered the art vortex. That's what I want.”
Architecturally, the Egg has always been an odd-man-out in the capital city. It sits on the podium of the Empire State Plaza amid a quintet of slender, rectangular International-style skyscrapers attached to the state Capitol.
The Egg looks like a flying saucer set on a pedestal. It has no right angles – even its elevators are curved.
“It's a striking expression of structure,” Edmund Meade, a structural engineer and historic preservationist, said during a 2015 panel discussion commemorating the Plaza’s 50th anniversary.
The Egg was originally supposed to be a general-purpose auditorium for government meetings, John Mesick, an architect who worked on the project, recalled during the discussion. Instead, it has been a venue for everything from jazz trumpeters to folk guitarists, modern dance pieces to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State speech.
Popular legend has it that former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller dictated The Egg’s unique form during a breakfast meeting with architect Wallace Harrison. Rockefeller is said to have taken a grapefruit, cut it in half, and set it on a small pitcher of cream.
Mesick said the real design was inspired by a Constantin Brâncuși sculpture called “The Fish.” But people close to Rockefeller said he enthusiastically embraced the auditorium and its addition to the complex that would eventually bear his name.
Critics did not. Its imposing form is seen as sterile. The Brooklyn band They Might Be Giants recorded a satirical music video about the venue after a 2004 gig.
“The Egg is a giant cement performance orb whose featureless exterior suggests a worrisome lack of fire exits,” the video begins. The song’s chorus is, “No corners for you.”
The same concrete that forms The Egg’s main bowl is visible in the lobby of one of its two auditoriums. It contrasts with a soft Brazilian pearwood, set in front of a blood-red cloth tapestry, that forms the inner walls.
The renovation underlines the tension between brutalist austerity and welcoming warmth by adding bright blue carpet. The lobby is scattered with new furniture – inspired by the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Hotel, the former terminal at JFK Airport – that tracks the curvature of the walls.
Inside the theaters, workers are putting the finishing touches on more than 500 new stage lights that will broaden the programming possibilities. In March, the Egg will show an immersive adaptation of Igor Stravinsky’s "Firebird."
Eber said spectators will walk through back stairwells and be offered capes. She’s started open houses where the lobby and auditoriums are filled with arcade games. She’s actively scheming about how to host a community slumber party.
“We're an incredibly unique space and we're committed to presenting programming and experiences that lives up to that uniqueness,” she said. “The Egg was not designed to fit within the fortress of bureaucracy. We were designed to disrupt it.”
