Circle in the Square Theatre
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a Broadway theater at 235 West 50th Street, within the basement of Paramount Plaza, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The current Broadway theater, completed in 1972, is the successor of an off-Broadway theater of the same name, co-founded around 1950 by a group that included Theodore Mann and José Quintero. The Broadway venue was designed by Allen Sayles; it originally contained 650 seats and uses a thrust stage that extends into the audience on three sides. The theater had 776 seats as of 2024.
The Circle in the Square Theatre was named for its first location at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, which opened in February 1951 and was operated as a theater in the round. During the 1950s and 1960s, the theater became what Women's Wear Daily described as the "center of Off-Broadway". The Sheridan Square theater was closed temporarily between 1954 and 1955 and was demolished in 1960. The company then moved to 159 Bleecker Street, known as Circle in the Square Downtown; that location continued to operate until about 1995. In addition to its Sheridan Square and Bleecker Street locations, the Circle hosted shows at other locations such as Ford's Theatre and the Henry Miller's Theatre.
The Gershwin Theatre and the Circle in the Square's Broadway theater were built as part of Paramount Plaza. The Circle opened its Broadway theater on November 15, 1972, and operated as a nonprofit subscription-supported producing house for the next 25 years. The theater typically presented three or four shows per year in the 1970s and 1980s, but, by the 1990s, the theater had a $1.5 million deficit. Following an unsuccessful attempt to appoint new leadership in 1994, the company filed for bankruptcy in 1997. The theater reopened in 1999, now operating as an independent commercial receiving house. The Circle in the Square Theatre School, a drama school within Paramount Plaza, is associated with the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Design
The Circle in the Square Theatre is in the basement of Paramount Plaza in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It was designed by Allen Sayles, with a lighting system designed by Jules Fisher. The Circle in the Square theatrical company operates its own venue, which was originally known as the Circle in the Square–Joseph E. Levine Theatre. It is one of Paramount Plaza's two theaters, the other being the much larger Gershwin Theatre on the second floor. Paramount Plaza's two venues, along with the Minskoff and American Place theaters, were constructed under the Special Theater District amendment of 1967 as a way to give their respective developers additional floor area. The space is accessed via escalators from street level, as well as via stairs.The theater was built with a capacity of 650 seats; as of 2022, the theater has 751 seats. The space was originally meant as an off-Broadway house with fewer than 500 seats, but the Circle's artistic director Theodore Mann and its managing director Paul Libin increased the capacity by relocating columns and replaced steps with ramps. Originally, the theater was decorated with red seats, and it had a red-and-gray carpet in a checkerboard pattern. The Circle's symbol, a cube, was incorporated into the design of the carpet and the light. The top of the auditorium contains soundproof panels, which minimized noise from police horses when the theater opened. A soundproof control booth was placed at the rear of the auditorium.
The Circle contains a thrust stage, with seats surrounding it on three sides, similar to the venue's off-Broadway predecessors. It is one of two Broadway houses with a thrust stage; the other is Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. Because of the stage's unconventional design, theatrical critics negatively reviewed it, while directors had difficulty staging productions there. Conversely, the design allowed the audience to be extremely close to the stage, as there were only ten rows of seats. According to Mann, the design of the current Circle in the Square was based on the predecessor theaters. These, in turn, were based on a recommendation from theater critic Brooks Atkinson, who had told Mann: "When you walk in the door, you should see the stage—that should predominate—not the audience."
Off-Broadway predecessors
The Circle in the Square was founded by Theodore Mann, José Quintero, Jason Wingreen, Aileen Cramer, Emily Stevens, and Edward Mann, all of whom were members of the Loft Players. The theater's founders were in their mid-20s and were described by The New York Times as having "little training, less experience, and no reputation in the theater". Sources disagree on when the organization was founded, but it may have been established in 1949 or 1950. The founding team wished to establish a "center dedicated to the development and presentation of all the arts". The team could not afford to open their theater in Manhattan's high-rent Theater District. Upon the recommendation of Mann's father Martin M. Goldman, the team opted for a location in Greenwich Village, which had a myriad of empty theaters.During the 1950s and 1960s, the theater became what Women's Wear Daily described as the "center of Off-Broadway", largely staging revivals at a time when traditional Broadway theaters presented experimental shows. Mel Gussow of The New York Times similarly described the original Circle as being within "the heartbeat of Off-Broadway" in Sheridan Square. Over the years, actors such as Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page, Jason Robards, Bradford Dillman, Dustin Hoffman, George Segal, George C. Scott, and James Earl Jones starred in the company's productions. In addition, the theater attracted such directors as Michael Cacoyannis, William Ball, and Alan Arkin. The Circle tended to stage productions by well-known playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Jean Giraudoux, Dylan Thomas, and Jules Feiffer.
5 Sheridan Square
The first Circle in the Square Theatre was at 5 Sheridan Square, a former nightclub in Greenwich Village. The Circle's founders signed a 10-year lease on the building. When the team signed the lease in 1951, they had $320 between them, including $300 that they had earned from operating a summer theater in Woodstock, New York. The Circle's founders raised $7,500, and Goldman formed Onyx Restaurants Inc. to lease the inn on behalf of the team, which was responsible for paying $1,000 a month in rent. The inn occupied a pair of brownstone residences. The first-floor living and dining rooms in one of the residences had been converted to a rectangular dance floor, while the three stories above the dance floor included 15 rooms. There was a bar in the rear of the dance floor, as well as a kitchen in the basement. Due to the inn's configuration, the theater's founders decided to operate the Circle as a theater in the round, wherein the audience surrounded the stage. The theater, and the eponymous company, derived their name from the facility's layout and its location at Sheridan Square.The theater was planned to open in November 1950, but the opening was delayed by two and a half months due to difficulties in securing a theatrical license. Ultimately, the Circle's founders were only allowed a cabaret license. The theater's first production was the play Dark of the Moon, which opened in February 1951. At the time, the off-Broadway industry was still relatively obscure and was not covered by mainstream newspapers. Mann, Quintero, and all actors were paid a flat salary of $20 per week. The Circle became more popular after theatrical critic Brooks Atkinson praised the Circle's production of Williams's Summer and Smoke in 1952. Mann said Atkinson's review prompted guests to line up for tickets during July, at a time when theaters traditionally closed in the summer due to a lack of air conditioning. Quintero directed some of the theater's most popular early productions, including The Grass Harp, American Gothic, and O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night. Notwithstanding the success of Summer and Smoke, the theater lost money during its first several years.
City officials closed the 5 Sheridan Square location in March 1954 because the venue did not comply with fire-safety regulations and because the space was only licensed as a cabaret. At the time, the Circle was described as one of the "most popular Off-Broadway theaters". During the 1954–1955 season, the Circle temporarily relocated to Broadway houses such as the 48th Street Theatre and the 46th Street Theatre. After Mann filed plans to renovate the theater in April 1955, city officials approved the theater's reopening. When the venue reopened on June 1, 1955, it was rebranded as the Circle in the Square Cabaret. It continued to host popular theatrical performances, such as Cradle Song, Children of Darkness, and Our Town. In July 1959, Mann, Quintero, and Leigh Connell announced that they had to relocate by that October because the building's owner was planning to redevelop the site. At the time of the announcement, the Circle had presented 18 shows, mostly revivals of plays, at 5 Sheridan Square. The old location remained open until January 8, 1960, and the inn was demolished the same year.
159 Bleecker Street
At the end of August 1959, Mann, Quintero, and Connell leased space at 159 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, which at the time was occupied by the Amato Opera Company. The structure had been constructed in 1917 and had been used for various purposes over the years, including a movie theater. Starting in October 1959, the group rebuilt the space as a circle-in-the-round theater, similar in arrangement to the original location. To comply with Off-Broadway regulations, the theater had 199 seats. Unlike the Sheridan Square location, the Bleecker Street theater had adequate space for dressing rooms. The newer space had higher ceilings, and it did not have support columns that obstructed patrons' views, as the Sheridan Square theater did. The new location, known as Circle in the Square Downtown, opened on January 9, 1960, with Our Town; the play's cast had given their last performance at 5 Sheridan Square the day before. The first new production at the Bleecker Street location, was a revival of Jean Genet's The Balcony which opened the same year.By the early 1960s, the Circle had staged several box-office flops and was in debt. Nonetheless, upon the theater's tenth anniversary in 1961, the New York Herald Tribune reported that Mann and Quintero were purchasing the Bleecker Street building, at a time when Off-Broadway theaters were in high demand. Quintero had directed 17 of the Circle's 21 plays at that point. Ultimately, Quintero decided to resign from the Circle by 1963, preferring to work as a freelance producer. Paul Libin was hired as the Circle in the Square's managing director the same year. This era also saw the Circle's longest-lasting production, The Trojan Women, which ran from 1963 to 1965. The company had staged 47 off-Broadway and 10 Broadway productions by its 20th anniversary in 1971.
Even though the company's Broadway theater opened in 1972, the Bleecker Street location continued to host off-Broadway shows through the late 1970s. In 1994, the Circle Repertory Company took over the Circle in the Square Downtown. Developers announced plans to raze the Bleecker Street theater in 2004. The venue was demolished in 2005 and replaced with a nine-story apartment building.