Cherry Lane Theatre
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The Cherry Lane Theatre, located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, is New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater.
A landmark in Greenwich Village’s cultural landscape, it was built as a farm silo in 1817, and also served as a tobacco warehouse and box factory before Edna St. Vincent Millay and other members of the Provincetown Players converted the structure into a theatre they christened the Cherry Lane Playhouse, which opened on March 24, 1924, with the play The Man Who Ate the Popomack. The Living Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, and the Downtown Theater movement all took root there, and it developed a reputation as a place where aspiring playwrights and emerging voices could showcase their work.
A staggering succession of plays have streamed out of the small edifice. Works by a decades-spanning parade of writers whose names have lent brilliance and distinction to the American and international literary and theatrical treasuries. They include F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Elmer Rice in the 20s; Eugene O’Neill, Sean O’Casey, Clifford Odets, W. H. Auden, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Pablo Picasso and William Saroyan in the 40s and 50s; Beckett, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco and LeRoi Jones in the 60s; and Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Joe Orton and David Mamet in the 70s and 80s.
Playhouse productions featured an equally illustrious group of actors and directors, including John Malkovich, Barbra Streisand, Geraldine Fitzgerald, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Gene Hackman, Bea Arthur (making her stage debut), Fritz Weaver, Judith Malina, Burl Ives, Colleen Dewhurst, Harvey Keitel, Cicely Tyson, Jerry Stiller, James Coco, Dolores Sutton, Shami Chaikin, James Broderick, Lee Strasberg, Roger Bart, Francot Tone, Roscoe Lee Browne, Alan Schneider, Claudia Shear, Anne Revere, Theodore Bikel, Peter Falk, Estelle Parsons, Judd Hirsch, Judith Ivey, Robert Wilson, Maxwell Caulfield, Adolf Green and Betty Comden, Alvin Epstein, Rue McClanahan, Shirley Knight, John Tillinger, Lewis Black, Sudie Bond, Tom Bosley (who also worked in the theater’s box office), Frances Sternhagen, Roy Scheider, James Noble, Geraldine Page, Mark Setlock, Gene Saks, Bob Dylan, F. Murray Abraham, Kiki & Herb, Jo Ann Worley, Joan Micklin Silver, John Rando, Gary Sinise, Vincent Gardenia, Micki Grant, Tony Musante, Rainn Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Kim Stanley, Frank Langella, Tyne Daly, John Epperson, Nancy Marchand, Robert Loggia, Dennis Quaid, Joan Cusack and Joseph Chaikin.
In 1985 and 1986, the Light Opera of Manhattan produced a 52-week per year stream of light opera and Gilbert and Sullivan, but the house was too small for the company.
In 1996, Artistic Director Angelina Fiordellisi revitalized Cherry Lane Theatre and within a year founded a resident non-profit company. Her aim is to sustain a community of playwrights and supporting theater artists, both seasoned and new, who provide a social mirror for a diverse, multigenerational audience with their work, much of it experimental in nature.
In 1998, she, along with playwright Michael Weller and Susann Brinkley, founded the company's Mentor Project, which matches pre-eminent 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 showcase production. Participants have included Pulitzer Prize-winners David Auburn, Charles Fuller, Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman, Alfred Uhry, Jules Feiffer and Wendy Wasserstein, as well as Pulitzer Prize nominees A.R. Gurney, David Henry Hwang (Tony Award, Obie Award), Craig Lucas, Theresa Rebeck, and Obie Award winners Ed Bullins (three-time winner) and Lynn Nottage, as Mentors. From the outset, Edward Albee has participated as the Mentor’s Mentor by attending Project readings and performances and conducting a yearly Master Class.
Fiordellisi has founded numerous other programs at the theater, including a Master Class series in 2000, which has attracted such distinguished playwrights as Edward Albee, David Henry Hwang, Marsha Norman, Alfred Uhry, A. R. Gurney, Wendy Wasserstein, Theresa Rebeck, Terrence McNally and Jules Feiffer.
Notable productions staged at the Cherry Lane include 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's and Stephen Schwartz's Godspell, Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven, and the long-running phenomenon Nunsense.
In 2008, the theater will mount the return of two historic one-acts as part of their annual Heritage Series: Edward Albee’s The American Dream (first produced at CLT in 1961 by Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder) and The Sandbox (first produced at CLT in 1962 in a collaboration between producers Richard Barr, Clinton Wilder and playwright Edward Albee). Both plays will star two-time Tony- and Drama Desk Award-winner Judith Ivey, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Obie Award winner Myra Carter, Drama Desk Award-winner George Bartenieff, and newcomer Jesse Williams. The evening will be directed by the playwright himself, the legendary Edward Albee. This production will coincide with the occasion of Mr. Albee’s 80th birthday.
