Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor presented a $6,000 check to JBJ Soul Kitchen Food Bank in Wainscott — helmed by Jon Bon Jovi. The funds were raised as a portion of the donations received during the theater’s one-night-only Starry Night Gala Telethon, which aired virtually at baystreet.org.
Bay Street committed a percentage of the evening’s proceeds to the Food Bank, which has provided meals for thousands of food-insecure families across the South Fork since it launched in May of this year.
“As the pandemic raged, and the food pantry lines kept growing—with cars literally snaking down the road for miles—we simply had to do something to help. It felt like an obvious choice to be sure our neighbors were receiving basic food necessities,” said Tracy Mitchell, Bay Street’s Executive Director who came up with the idea.
The JBJ Soul Foundation operated the food distribution center at the JBJ Soul Kitchen Food Bank between May and September in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to its mission, its initial commitment was to purchase and supply food for 5,000 individuals monthly for four months, at a time when many food pantries were seeing a 500 percent increase in the need for food.
In its 18 weeks of food distribution, JBJ delivered over 200 tons of healthy, shelf-stable food on the East End. At just one pantry, the food provided through the JBJ Soul Foundation helped feed over 10,000 residents from May 17 to September 1.
The Starry Night Telethon was a virtual celebration of the Broadway musicals of the 1970s, and paid comedic homage to the celebrity telethon specials popular at the time. The evening included a script written by playwright Scooter Pietsch, whose comedy, “Windfall,” was scheduled to be staged for its world premiere during the 2020 Mainstage Season at Bay Street.
Throughout the evening, special guests performed numbers from some of Broadway’s biggest musicals of the 1970s, including “A Chorus Line,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” and “The Wiz.” Performers included Raul Esparza, Ben Vereen, Melissa Errico, Betty Buckley, André De Shields, Josh Young, Hunter Parrish, Trent Saunders, Arianna Rosario, Omar Lopez-Cepero, and many others. The host for the evening was actor and member of Bay Street Theater’s Board of Trustees, Richard Kind.