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28-546: The Cherry Lane Theatre is the oldest continuously running off-Broadway theater in New York City. The theater is located at 38 Commerce Street between Barrow and Bedford Streets in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village , Manhattan , New York City . The Cherry Lane Theatre contains a 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio. The building was constructed as a farm silo in 1817, and also served as
56-548: A brewery, tobacco warehouse and box factory before Evelyn Vaughn, William S. Rainey, Reginald Travers & Edna St. Vincent Millay converted the structure into a theater they christened the Cherry Lane Playhouse. It opened in 1923. Its first reviewed show was Saturday Night by Robert Presnell, which opened on February 9, 1924. This was followed by the plays The Man Who Ate Popomack , by W. J. Turner, directed by Reginald Travers, on March 24, 1924; and The Way of
84-509: A new outlet for "poets, playwrights, actors, songwriters, and designers. ... The first great Off-Broadway musical was the 1954 revival" of The Threepenny Opera , which proved that off-Broadway productions could be financially successful. Critic John Gassner argued at the time, however, that "Broadway is just as eclectic – and just as footless – as 'Off-Broadway'." Theatre Row , on West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues in Manhattan,
112-482: Is a concentration of off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatres. It was developed in the mid-1970s and modernized in 2002. Many off-Broadway shows have had subsequent runs on Broadway, including such musicals as Hair , Godspell , Little Shop of Horrors , Sunday in the Park with George , Rent , Grey Gardens , Urinetown , Avenue Q , The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee , Rock of Ages , In
140-555: Is a production of a play , musical , or revue that appears in such a venue and adheres to related trade union and other contracts. Some shows that premiere off-Broadway are subsequently produced on Broadway. The term originally referred to any venue, and its productions, on a street intersecting Broadway in Midtown Manhattan 's Theater District , the hub of the American theatre industry. It later became defined by
168-524: Is based on the capacity given for the respective theatre at the Internet Off-Broadway Database . Michael Weller Michael Weller (born September 26, 1942) is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screen writer . His plays include Moonchildren , Loose Ends , Spoils of War and Fifty Words . His screenplays include Ragtime , for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and Hair , both directed by Miloš Forman . Weller
196-600: The Lucille Lortel Award (created in 1985 by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres & Producers), and the Drama League Award . Although off-Broadway shows are not eligible for Tony Awards , an exception was made in 1956 (before the rules were changed), when Lotte Lenya won Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for the off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera . Capacity
224-628: The counterculture . It regularly staged works by playwrights associated with the Theatre of the Absurd . The modernist stage company The Living Theatre was in residence in 1951 and 1952, performing rarities like Pablo Picasso 's Desire Caught by the Tail . Occasionally the theatre even hosted musical performances, providing a venue for Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger long before their ascensions to fame. A succession of major American plays were produced at
252-579: The 1960s, as well as Edward Albee , staging a large number of his plays; and Sam Shepard , Joe Orton and David Mamet in the 1970s and 1980s. Beckett's Happy Days had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane, directed by Alan Schneider , on September 17, 1961, and the American premiere of his Endgame opened on January 28, 1958, also directed by Schneider, starring Alvin Epstein and Lester Rawlins . Sam Shepard 's True West premiered at
280-667: The Broadway Box are the Laura Pels Theatre and The Theater Center . The off-Broadway movement started in the 1950s as a reaction to the perceived commercialism of Broadway and provided less expensive venues for shows that have employed many future Broadway artists. An early success was Circle in the Square Theatre 's 1952 production of Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams . According to theatre historians Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik, off-Broadway offered
308-686: The Cherry Lane Alternative. However, in November, it was announced that the sale to the Lortel Foundation had fallen through, and the theater was back on the market for nearly $ 13 million. In March 2023, a partnership between film studio A24 and global private equity real estate firm Taurus Investment Holdings, LLC purchased the theatre from Fiordellisi for a little over $ 10 million, marking an expansion for A24 beyond film and television into theatre. Productions staged at
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#1732766241163336-635: The Cherry Lane include The Rimers of Eldritch , Claudia Shear 's Blown Sideways Through Life, Fortune's Fool with Alan Bates and Frank Langella , The Sum of Us with Tony Goldwyn , the Richard Maltby Jr. / David Shire musical Closer Than Ever , Sam Shepard 's True West , Joe Orton 's Entertaining Mr. Sloane , Edward Albee 's The Zoo Story , John-Michael Tebelak and Stephen Schwartz 's Godspell , Paul Osborn 's Morning's at Seven , Laura Pedersen 's The Brightness of Heaven (later changed to For Heaven's Sake ! ),
364-511: The Cherry Lane on October 17, 1982, starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise . Angelina Fiordellisi bought the theater and the building in 1996 for $ 1.7 million, and renovated it for $ 3 million. That year, artistic director Fiordellisi and Susann Brinkley co-founded the Cherry Lane Theatre Company and the Cherry Lane Alternative followed in 1997. In 1998, Fiordellisi, Brinkley, and playwright Michael Weller co-founded
392-932: The Heights , Spring Awakening , Next to Normal , Hedwig and the Angry Inch , Fun Home , Hamilton , Dear Evan Hansen , Hadestown , and Kimberly Akimbo . In particular, two that became Broadway hits, Grease and A Chorus Line , encouraged other producers to premiere their shows off-Broadway. Plays that have moved from off-Broadway houses to Broadway include Doubt , I Am My Own Wife , Bridge & Tunnel , The Normal Heart , and Coastal Disturbances . Other productions, such as Stomp , Blue Man Group , Altar Boyz , Perfect Crime , Forbidden Broadway , Nunsense , Naked Boys Singing , Bat Boy: The Musical , and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change have had runs of many years off-Broadway, never moving to Broadway. The Fantasticks ,
420-574: The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers as a professional venue in Manhattan with a seating capacity of at least 100, but not more than 499, or a production that appears in such a venue and adheres to related trade union and other contracts. Previously, regardless of the size of the venue, a theatre was considered a Broadway (rather than off-Broadway) house if it was within the "Broadway Box", extending from 40th Street north to 54th Street and from Sixth Avenue west to Eighth Avenue , including Times Square and West 42nd Street . This change to
448-468: The Square Theatre . His play Spoils of War was adapted as a screenplay and became the TV film In Spite of Love. Kate Nelligan played the part of Elise in both. In 2017 Brandeis University honored Weller with the university's Brandeis Creative Arts Award. The university invited him to write a new play and suggested it might explore issues regarding freedom of speech. The university had recently received
476-592: The World by William Congreve, produced by the Cherry Lane Players Inc., opening November 17, 1924. The theatre received a significant makeover in 1954 when it acquired much of the expensive furnishings sold off by Rockefeller Center 's failing Center Theatre . The Cherry Lane Theatre has long been a home for nontraditional and experimental works. Particularly during the 1950s and '60s, it hosted many avant garde performances that were identified with
504-600: The company's Mentor Project, which matches established dramatists with aspiring playwrights in one-to-one mentoring relationships. Each mentor works with a playwright to perfect a single work during the season-long process, which culminates in a production. Participants have included Pulitzer Prize -winners David Auburn , Charles Fuller , Tony Kushner , Marsha Norman , Alfred Uhry , Jules Feiffer , and Wendy Wasserstein ; Pulitzer nominees A.R. Gurney , David Henry Hwang , Craig Lucas , and Theresa Rebeck ; and Obie Award winners Ed Bullins and Lynn Nottage , as mentors. From
532-462: The contractual definition of "off-Broadway" benefited theatres satisfying the 499-seat criterion because of the lower minimum required salary for Actors' Equity performers at Off-Broadway theatres as compared with the salary requirements of the union for Broadway theatres. The adoption of the 499-seat criterion occurred after a one-day strike in January 1974. Examples of off-Broadway theatres within
560-502: The long-running Nunsense , and David Rimmer 's Album , a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Also presented was a 25th-anniversary revival of Nunsense, running June 15 to July 18, 2010. Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres , but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer than 100. An "off-Broadway production"
588-681: The longest-running musical in theatre history, spent its original 42-year run off-Broadway and had another off-Broadway run from 2006 to 2017. Off-Broadway shows, performers, and creative staff are eligible for the following awards: the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award , the Outer Critics Circle Award , the Drama Desk Award , the Obie Award (presented since 1956 by The Village Voice ),
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#1732766241163616-578: The outset, Edward Albee has participated as the Mentor's Mentor by attending Project readings and performances and conducting a yearly Master Class. In July 2010, the theater announced a one-year hiatus in an effort to tackle mounting debt. In August 2011, Angelina Fiordellisi announced that Cherry Lane Theatre had been able to work off almost all of its debt, and planned to produce again in 2012. Fiordellisi had received hundreds of phone calls and emails and visits from people who were concerned to hear that she
644-460: The papers of the social-satirist and stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce . Weller researched the library's collection of the Bruce papers, and began to write his play Buyer Beware , a play that poses the question: If Lenny Bruce were to come back, and book a gig on a campus of today, what would happen? He is described as writing with insight and objectivity about characters who came of age in the time of
672-467: The theater, by writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald , John Dos Passos , and Elmer Rice in the 1920s; Eugene O'Neill , Seán O'Casey , Clifford Odets , W. H. Auden , Gertrude Stein , Luigi Pirandello , and William Saroyan in the 1940s; Samuel Beckett, Pablo Picasso , T. S. Eliot , Jean Anouilh , and Tennessee Williams in the 1950s; Harold Pinter , LeRoi Jones , Eugène Ionesco , Terrence McNally , Lanford Wilson , and Lorraine Hansberry , in
700-714: The war in Vietnam, and he has also written plays that are more personal and deal with matters of the heart. Weller has been active in the Dramatists Guild of America , battling for the rights of playwrights. He has served as President of the Writers Guild Initiative from 2011 to 2018. Weller is one of the founders of the Cherry Lane Theatre's acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs pre-eminent playwrights with emerging playwrights for
728-529: Was an early collaborator with the playwrights Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee , saw a London run-through of Weller's play Moonchildren , and brought it to the Arena Stage in Washington then to Broadway. Moonchildren subsequently had an acclaimed run off-Broadway at the Theatre de Lys in 1973 and 1974. Schneider also staged Weller's play Loose Ends at the Arena Stage then on Broadway at Circle in
756-640: Was born in New York City, and has lived in Nevada, Massachusetts, London and New York. He attended Stockbridge School and studied music composition at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. In the late 1960s at Manchester University , he studied playwriting with Stephen Joseph (the child of actress Hermione Gingold and the publisher Michael Joseph ) and received a Diploma in Drama. He then moved to London to write plays. The director Alan Schneider , who
784-587: Was leaving and that the theatre was for sale, and when those people started referring rentals to Cherry Lane, she was able to look ahead and feel more secure about the theatre's financial future. Cherry Lane Theatre began producing new works again with its Obie Award –winning Mentor Project in February 2012. In July 2021, it was announced that the theatre had been sold to the Lucille Lortel Foundation, and Fiordellisi would remain involved with
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