Venue

Lucille Lortel Theatre

121 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014
lortel.org

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Lucille Lortel Theatre is an off-Broadway playhouse located at 121 Christopher Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The venue was built in 1953 as the Theater de Lys and housed a revival of The Threepenny Opera, which opened on March 10, 1954. In 1955, financier Louis Schweitzer acquired the building as an anniversary present for his wife, actress-producer Lucille Lortel (1900–1999). Private Lives by Noel Coward played at the theatre in 1968.

The theatre has been in continuous operation as New York’s premiere Off-Broadway playhouse since 1955. In 1999 Lucille Lortel granted the Lucille Lortel Theatre to the Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation, establishing a new booking policy of non-profit productions only. Since that time it has housed productions such as Arthur Kopit’s Y2K (Manhattan Theatre Company), Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Theatre for a New Audience) and Romeo and Juliet (TheaterworksUSA), Lee Blessing’s Cobb (The Melting Pot Theatre Company and Trigger Street Productions), and Noel Coward’s Suite in Two Keys (Mirage Theatre Company).

The theatre has also been host to numerous benefit performances, readings, and meetings such as: a benefit for the AIDS Theatre Project; an informational meeting regarding 9/11 emergency relief by the New York Foundation for the Arts; and a benefit performance of Watch Your Step, a landmines awareness program sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.