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. 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 751 seats as of 2022.[a]
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 house were built as part of Paramount Plaza (originally known as the Uris Building). The Circle's Broadway house opened 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[edit]
The Circle in the Square Theatre is in the basement of Paramount Plaza.[1] It was designed by Allen Sayles, with a lighting system designed by Jules Fisher.[1] The Circle operates its own venue, which was originally known as the Circle in the Square–Joseph E. Levine Theatre.[2][3] It is one of Paramount Plaza's two theaters, the other being the much larger Gershwin Theatre on the second floor.[4][5] 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.[6] The space is accessed via escalators from street level,[1][7] as well as via stairs.[1][8]
The theater was built with a capacity of 650 seats;[1][9] as of 2022, the theater has 751 seats.[10][a] 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.[12] 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.[1] The top of the auditorium contains soundproof panels, which minimized noise from police horses when the theater opened.[12] A soundproof control booth was placed at the rear of the auditorium.[8]
The Circle contains a thrust stage, with seats surrounding it on three sides,[12][13] similar to the venue's off-Broadway predecessors.[14] 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.[15] Conversely, the design allowed the audience to be extremely close to the stage, as there were only ten rows of seats.[16] 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."[1]