Vivian Beaumont Theatre

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Vivian Beaumont Theatre, New York, on West 65th Street. Designed by Eero Saarinen with the collaboration of Jo Mielziner and seating 1,140, this theatre opened in 1965. It forms part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and housed the Lincoln Center Repertory Company from the Washington Square Theatre. Its opening production was Büchner's Danton's Death, later presentations including Sartre's The Condemned of Altona, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle (both 1966), Tennessee Williams's Camino Real, and Sam Shepard's Operation Sidewinder (both 1970). In 1973 the theatre was taken over by Joseph Papp, reopening with David Rabe's Boom Boom Room and presenting revivals of Strindberg's The Dance of Death in 1974, Hamlet in 1975, Brecht and Weill's The Three-penny Opera in 1976, and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, with Irene Worth, in 1977. A smaller downstairs theatre seating 299 in the same building, which opened in 1966 as the Forum, was also taken over by Papp in 1973 and renamed the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre; it staged plays by Shakespeare, opening with Troilus and Cressida, and new plays such as David Rabe's Streamers (1976). In 1977 a financial deficit forced Papp to give up the theatres, which were then used only intermittently for such productions as Peter Brook's La Tragédie de Carmen (1983), adapted from Bizet's opera, and C. P. Taylor's And a Nightingale Sang … (also 1983). In 1985 however the Mitzi E. Newhouse staged Mamet's one-acters Prairie du Chien and The Shawl followed by John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves (1986), the last transferring to the Vivian Beaumont, which later staged other productions including Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes (both 1987); the Mitzi Newhouse housed the South African musical Sarafina! (also 1987), which moved to Broadway.

Vivian Beaumont Theatre(New York). One of Broadway's two nonproscenium theatre spaces, this flexible performance space at Lincoln Center was co‐designed by architect Eero Saarinen and scenic designer Jo Mielziner to house the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center. It features a semicircular auditorium and an acting area that can shift from a thrust stage to a modified proscenium. Seating was also changeable (from 1,083 to 1,140 seats, depending on the configuration), and the backstage was twice as large as traditional playhouses. The modern, simply decorated theatre was named after donor Mrs. Vivian Beaumont Allen and opened in 1965. From the start there were complaints about the theatre's acoustical deficiencies and the problems encountered with the thrust stage. Over the years the auditorium has been remodeled, but only a few of its many difficulties have been resolved. Yet every once in a while a production plays at the Vivian Beaumont that seems to thrive on the awkward space, such as Joseph Papp's The Threepenny Opera (1976), Andrei Serban's The Cherry Orchard (1977), Six Degrees of Separation (1990), and the musical revivals Anything Goes (1987) and Carousel (1994).