The Lucille Lortel Theatre is an

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 tha ...

playhouse at 121 Christopher Street in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...

. It was built in 1926 as a 590-seat movie theater called the New Hudson, later known as Hudson Playhouse. The interior design is largely unchanged, though it had 295 seats. In the early 1950s, the site was converted to an off-Broadway theater as , opening on June 9, 1953, with a production of ''Maya'', a play by Simon Gantillon starring

Kay Medford Margaret Kathleen Regan (September 14, 1919 – April 10, 1980), better known as Kay Medford, was an American actress. For her performance as Rose Brice in the musical ''Funny Girl (musical), Funny Girl'' and the Funny Girl (film), film adaptati ...

, Vivian Matalon, and

Susan Strasberg Susan Elizabeth Strasberg (May 22, 1938 – January 21, 1999) was an American stage, film, and television actress. Thought to be the next Audrey Hepburn, Hepburn-type Ingénue, ingenue, she was nominated for a Tony Award at age 18, playing the ti ...

. It closed after seven performances. Much more successful was ''

The Threepenny Opera ''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a 1928 German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, '' The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François V ...

'' which opened March 10, 1954, with a cast that included Bea Arthur,

John Astin John Allen Astin (born March 30, 1930) is an American actor and director who has appeared in numerous stage, television and film roles, primarily in character roles. He is widely known for his role as patriarch Gomez Addams in ''The Addams Famil ...

Lotte Lenya Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is be ...

, Leon Lishner, Scott Merrill, Gerald Price,

Charlotte Rae Charlotte Rae Lubotsky (April 22, 1926 – August 5, 2018) was an American character actress and singer whose career spanned sixty-six years. Rae was known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms ''Diff'rent Strokes'' and its spin-o ...

and

Jo Sullivan Elizabeth Josephine Sullivan Loesser (née Sullivan; August 28, 1927 – April 28, 2019) was an American actress and high lyric soprano singer. She became a musical theatre star with her performance in the original production of '' The Most Happ ...

. Because of an incoming booking, it was forced to close after 96 performances. Re-opening September 20, 1955, with largely the same cast, ''The Threepenny Opera'' this time played until December 17, 1961, a then record-setting run for a musical in New York City. In 1955, financier Louis Schweitzer acquired the building as an anniversary present for his wife, actress-producer Lucille Lortel. In 1981, the year of her 81st birthday, the theatre was renamed in her honor. After Lortel's death in April 1999, she left the theatre to the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

Timeline of productions

*1953: ''Maya'' *1953: '' The Scarecrow'' *1953: '' The School for Scandal'' *1953: '' The Little Clay Cart'' *1953: ''Little Red Riding Hood'' *1953: ''End as a Man'' *1953: ''

The Knight of the Burning Pestle ''The Knight of the Burning Pestle'' is a play in five acts by Francis Beaumont, first performed at Blackfriars Theatre in 1607 and published in a book size, quarto in 1613. It is the earliest whole parody (or pastiche) play in English. The pl ...

'' *1953: ''Moon in Capricorn'' *1954: ''Bullfight'' *1954: ''

'' *1955: ''The Immortal Husband'' *1955: ''Teach Me How to Cry'' *1955: ''

'' *1956: '' Cry, the Beloved Country'' *1956: ''Lovers, Villains and Fools of Shakespeare'' *1956: ''U.S.A.'' *1957: ''The Happy Prince'' *1957: ''The Birthday of the Infanta'' *1957: ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

'' *1957: ''

Pelléas and Mélisande ''Pelléas and Mélisande'' () is a Symbolism (movement), Symbolist play by the Belgian playwright and author Maurice Maeterlinck. The play is about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters and was first performed in 1893 in literature, ...

'' *1957: ''Metamorphosis'' *1957: '' Candida'' *1957: ''World Famous Dramatic Recitals'' *1957: ''Pale Horse, Pale Rider'' *1957: ''Santa Claus'' *1957: ''For the Time Being'' *1958: '' Edward II'' *1958: ''Guests of the Nation'' *1958: ''Aria Da Capo'' *1958: ''Maidens and Mistresses at Home at the Zoo'' *1958: ''The Catbird Seat'' *1958: '' Riders to the Sea'' *1958: '' Blood Wedding'' *1958: ''Curtains Up'' *1959: ''Philoctetes (Andre Gide play)'' *1959: ''

Philoctetes (Sophocles play) ''Philoctetes'' (, ''Philoktētēs''; English pronunciation: , stressed on the third syllable, ''-tet-'') is a play by Sophocles (Aeschylus and Euripides also each wrote a ''Philoctetes'' but theirs have not survived). The play was written dur ...

'' *1959: ''Sweet Confession'' *1959: '' I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix'' *1959: ''Soul Gone Home'' *1959: ''Shakespeare in Harlem'' *1959: ''This Music Crept by Me Upon the Waters'' *1959: '' A Masque of Reason'' *1959: '' The Purification'' *1959: ''Glory in the Flower'' *1960: '' Victims of Duty'' *1960: ''Notes from the Underground'' *1960: ''Too Close for Comfort'' *1960: ''The Gay Apprentice'' *1960: ''The Coggerers'' *1960: ''Time to Go'' *1960: ''Nekros'' *1960: ''Fam and Yam'' *1960: '' Embers'' *1960: ''The Lady Akane'' *1960: ''Hanjo'' *1960: ''The Shepherd's Chameleon'' *1964: ''

As You Like It ''As You Like It'' is a pastoral Shakespearean comedy, comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wil ...

'' *1967: ''The Viewing'', ( Lyle Kessler);

The Deer Park ''The Deer Park'' is a Hollywood novel written by Norman Mailer and published in 1955 by G.P. Putnam's Sons after it was rejected by Mailer's publisher, Rinehart & Company, for obscenity. Despite having already typeset the book, Rinehart claime ...

*1967 Now Is the Time for All Good Men *1968: '' House of Flowers''; ''

Private Lives ''Private Lives'' is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It concerns a divorced couple who, while honeymooning with their new spouses, discover that they are staying in adjacent rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetuall ...

'' *1968 Futz *1969: '' Dames at Sea'' *1971: '' Black Girl'' *1971 Acrobats/Line *1973: '' Moonchildren'' *1973: ''The Children’s Mass'' *1976: '' Eden'' *1977 A Life in the Theatre *1981: '' Cloud 9''; '' A Soldier's Play'' *1984: '' 'night, Mother'' *1987: ''

Steel Magnolias ''Steel Magnolias'' is a 1989 American comedy drama film directed by Herbert Ross and starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Julia Roberts. The screenplay by Robert Harling is based on hi ...

'' *1990: '' Falsettoland'' *1992: '' Lips Together, Teeth Apart''; '' The Destiny of Me'' *1995 Mrs. Klein *1996: '' The Boys in the Band'' *1996: '' Tooth of Crime: Second Dance'' *1997: '' As Bees In Honey Drown'' *2004: '' Fat Pig'' *2005: '' Silence! The Musical'' *2006: '' Some Girl(s)'' *2007: '' In a Dark Dark House'' *2007: '' Seussical'' *2008: '' reasons to be pretty'' *2009: ''

Coraline ''Coraline'' () is a 2002 British dark fantasy horror children's novella by author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started writing ''Coraline'' in 1990, and it was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for ...

'' *2012: '' Carrie'' *2016: '' The School for Scandal'' *2016: '' Ride the Cyclone'' *2017: '' The Lightning Thief'' *2019: ''

Fear Fear is an unpleasant emotion that arises in response to perception, perceived dangers or threats. Fear causes physiological and psychological changes. It may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the ...

'' *2023: ''

'' *2023: '' Danny and the Deep Blue Sea'' *2024: '' Oh, Mary!'' *2024: '' Hold On to Me Darling'' *2025: '' Vanya''

References

External links

* *
Productions
past and future * * * {{Authority control Off-Broadway theaters 1953 establishments in New York City Christopher Street