Circle Repertory Company

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Circle Repertory Company (New York). After several years of informal collaboration and exploratory discussions, the group was founded in 1969 by Tanya Berezin, Marshall W. Mason, Robert Thirkield, and Lanford Wilson and was designed to promote the best in American playwriting. Among its many notable productions were Wilson's The Hot l Baltimore (1973), The Fifth of July (1978), Talley's Folly (1979), and Burn This (1988) as well as Jules Feiffer's Knock Knock (1976), Albert Innaurato's Gemini (1977), Sam Shepard's Fool for Love (1983), and William M. Hoffman's As Is (1985), one of the first and best plays about the AIDS epidemic. The emphasis at the Circle was always on the playwright, but certain company members, such as Berezin, Judd Hirsch, Trish Hawkins, Helen Stenborg, Jonathan Hogan, William Hurt, and Jeff Daniels, became familiar favorites who returned to the small space even after some of them found success on Broadway and elsewhere. The company lost its impetus in the early 1990s and by 1996 decided to close, more from a mutual desire by its creators to move on than for lack of audience interest. For nearly thirty years the Circle was one of Off Broadway's finest venues for promising American playwrights.

Circle Repertory Company, off-off-Broadway company founded in a loft in 1969 by a group who had worked together at Café La Mama, Caffé Cino, and elsewhere. It makes an important contribution to the American repertory, its members numbering over 100, including writers and directors. Its initial season was remarkable for a double production of Chekhov's Three Sisters in which the original and an experimental version alternated. The company is best known, however, for its productions of new American plays, including Mark Medoff's When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1973), Feiffer's Knock Knock (1976), and Albert Innaurato's Gemini (1977), all of which transferred to the commercial theatre. Originally established at Broadway and 83rd Street, the company moved in 1974 to the former Sheridan Square Playhouse in 7th Avenue South, which became the Circle Repertory Company Theatre, a flexible performing space seating 100–150. Lanford Wilson was one of the founders, and several of his plays were premièred by the company, which in the mid-1970s became professional and Off-Broadway. Among other productions were Sam Shepard's Buried Child (1979) and Fool for Love (1983).