Soho Repertory Theatre
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Soho Repertory Theatre, sometimes better known by its nickname Soho Rep, is a 70-seat theatre company in New York City, that has won six Obie Awards, four Drama Desk Award nominations, and an Oppenheimer Award. It considers itself a “hot house” for the development of groundbreaking and unconventional new plays, cultivating new work from first impulse through fully-mounted productions, and, according to its mission statement, it seeks "the play that is only a play, not a TV show or a film."
Soho Rep was founded in July 1975 by Jerry Engelbach, a native New Yorker, and Marlene Swartz, originally from Dallas. They ran the theatre as co-artistic directors until 1989, when Engelbach left, and Swartz continued with new partner Julian Webber, who was originally from England. Swartz herself left several years later, leaving Webber at the helm. Swartz is credited as co-director of the long-running Blue Man Group show, which received an early experimental performance at Soho Rep.
Soho Rep’s founding mission was to present relatively rare classical plays. After several years producing works from Shakespeare to Shaw, the theatre expanded its mission to include rarely seen modern plays and completely new works. Among Soho Rep’s New York premieres were the stage version of Rod Serling’s television play Requiem for a Heavyweight, J.P. Donleavy’s Fairy Tales of New York, and Preston Sturges’s A Cup of Coffee, the stage play on which he based his film Christmas in July. Among the many new works presented were plays by Americans Len Jenkin and Mac Wellman, and Britons Nicholas Wright, David Lan, and Barrie Keefe.
Early on, Soho Rep’s audience saw performances by many rising young actors, including Kevin Spacey, Kathleen Turner, Jonathan Frakes, and Ed O'Neill, as well as scores of later successful lighting, set, and costume designers.
Soho Rep’s first home was in the SoHo section of Manhattan, on the ground floor of a loft building at 19 Mercer Street. After the building was sold and the Rep forced to move, it received a grant from the office of then Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein (later president of the New York City Council) to renovate the auditorium of the partly abandoned old Bellevue Hospital building on East 29th Street. However, the theatre company was unable to raise additional funds to bring the location up to commercial code, and through a grandfathering dispensation from the New York Building Code Authority was allowed to occupy its new space for just one season.
Soho Rep’s next home was Greenwich House, an historic settlement building on Barrow Street in Greenwich Village. The settlement had been home to several theatre groups in the past, and in addition to its community services, runs a highly respected pottery center and a prestigious music school. However, having to share the theatre space at Greenwich House with other performance events eventually proved confining, and after several seasons Soho Rep, under Marlene Swartz and Julian Webber, moved to its present home at 46 Walker Street.
Ironically, Soho Rep was actually located in SoHo for only its first few years: Bellevue Hospital is in Kips Bay, Greenwich House is in the Village, and Walker Street is below Soho, in TriBeCa. It has also performed at outside venues, among them the Queens Playhouse in the Park and Saint Bartholomew’s Church.
Although Soho Rep is known as a preeminent place where new American plays make their debuts, since the departure of Engelbach and Swartz the subsequent artistic directors have all been English: Julian Webber, Daniel Aukin, and current Artistic Director Sarah Benson.
The theatre is known as having the youngest audience in New York City. It has debuted new plays by Mac Wellman, Wendy MacLeod, Richard Maxwell, Melissa James Gibson, The Flying Machine, Mark Schultz, Adam Bock, and others. It also has multiple play development programs, including the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, which was founded in 1999 by two directors, Linsay Firman and Laramie Dennis. It is currently run by a director, Maria Goyanes, and a playwright, Jason Grote.
