This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2023) |
Former names | Gramercy Park Theatre Blender Theatre |
---|---|
Address | 127 E. 23rd St. |
Location | New York City |
Coordinates | 40°44′23″N73°59′06″W / 40.739753°N 73.985001°W |
Owner | Live Nation Entertainment |
Type | Theatre |
Capacity | 650 |
Construction | |
Built | 1937 |
Website | |
www |
The Gramercy Theatre is a music venue in New York City. It is located in the Gramercy neighborhood of Manhattan, on 127 East 23rd Street. Built in 1937 as the Gramercy Park Theatre, it is owned and operated by Live Nation as one of their two concert halls in New York City, the other being the nearby Irving Plaza. [1]
Built in 1937 and designed by architect Charles A. Sandblom in the Streamline Moderne style, the theater is located at 127 E. 23rd St in the historic Gramercy neighborhood. It was originally known as the Gramercy Park Theatre to avoid confusion with the existing Gramercy Theatre at 310 First Avenue, which had 521 seats. After the old Gramercy Theatre succumbed to TV competition in the early 1950s, the newer theater dropped "Park" from its name.
In the 1950s, the theater was purchased by Cinema V, an art-film presentation and distribution company. The theater was considered an "art house" due to eclectic programming, its unconventional policy of barring admittance near the end of a film, and coffee served in the waiting area. Cinema V was descended from Rugoff and Becker theaters, a chain started in 1921 by Don Rugoff's father. Rugoff gained control of the company in 1957 and expanded the chain, adding several venues including the Gramercy Theatre. Some of the programming that The New York Times lists in the 50s for the Gramercy Theatre switched from single bookings to double features, a novel approach for the time. There were a mix of foreign, sub-run mainstream, Disney films, and revivals.
In the early 1970s, the Theatre was a dollar-theater, showing third run movies. In the late 1970s it showed second-run films such as The Spy Who Loved Me, New York, New York, 3 Women, and Outrageous!.In the early 1980s, still under Cinema V, the theater showcased first-run movies. Cinema V changed to City Cinemas in the late 1980s, and did record breaking business until Cineplex Odeon opened the nine-screen Chelsea Cinemas and large audiences disappeared from Gramercy. In 1992, City Cinemas closed the theater after using it briefly as a Hollywood classics revival house.
In 1995, Amit Govil, a real estate investor, revived the theater into the only movie house in the five boroughs to exclusively feature films made in India. [2] Immediately before that, it was the home of an anti-drug agency. It was also used around this time as the location shoot for The Fugees video "Killing me Softly". [3]
In 1998, the theater was renovated into a 499-seat playhouse to present Off Broadway theatrical productions, the largest in the city. In 1999, the Roundabout Theater Company premiered plays by contemporary writers such as Brian Friel, Paula Vogel, Beth Henley, and Harold Pinter. Performances included Charles Randolph-Wright's play with music, Blue starring Phylicia Rashad; Martin McDonagh's A Skull in Connemara; Speaking in Tongues with Karen Allen; and Richard Greenberg's The Dazzle. [4]
In 2002, Roundabout presented its final offering, All Over by Edward Albee, before closing in September. Soon after, in 2002, the Museum of Modern Art used the theater as a temporary film-house, while its location on 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan was remodeled. From 2002 to 2004, the theater was simultaneously used as a film-house and an Off-Broadway playhouse. In 2004, the theater was shut down after its last production of Lee Summers' From My Hometown, which ran from April 12 to July 12, 2004. MoMA stopped using it as a cinema in April 2004.
In 2006, Live Nation bought the space with the intention of turning it into an intimate concert venue. The first performance under Live Nation was Stellastarr on March 7, 2007. On April 26, 2007, Blender magazine became an official namesake sponsor and the venue was renamed the Blender Theater at Gramercy (note: "Theatre" was officially changed to "Theater" for the sponsorship). After two years, the name changed back to the Gramercy Theatre without a sponsorship in the name.
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 than 100.
The School of Visual Arts New York City is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
Broadway theatre, or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in 41 professional theaters, each with 500 or more seats, in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.
23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan, one of the major two-way, east-west streets in the borough's grid. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided into its east and west sections at Fifth Avenue. The street runs from Avenue C and FDR Drive in the east to Eleventh Avenue in the west.
Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works.
Robert Cuccioli is an American actor and singer. He is best known for originating the lead dual title roles in the musical Jekyll & Hyde, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Joseph Jefferson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Fany Award for outstanding actor in a musical.
The American Airlines Theatre, originally the Selwyn Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 227 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Built in 1918, it was designed by George Keister and developed by brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, for whom the theater was originally named. The theater is owned by the city and state governments of New York and leased to New 42nd Street. It has 740 seats across two levels and is operated by Roundabout Theatre Company. Since 2000, the theater has been named for American Airlines (AA), which bought the theater's naming rights.
The Stephen Sondheim Theatre, formerly Henry Miller's Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 124 West 43rd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Owned by the Durst Organization and managed by the Roundabout Theatre Company, the modern 1,055-seat theater opened in 2009 at the base of the Bank of America Tower. The current theater is mostly underground and was designed by Cookfox, architects of the Bank of America Tower. It retains the landmarked facade of the original Henry Miller's Theatre, which was built in 1918 by Henry Miller, the actor and producer.
The Roundabout Theatre Company is a non-profit theatre company based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, affiliated with the League of Resident Theatres.
A revival house or repertory cinema is a cinema that specializes in showing classic or notable older films. Such venues may include standard repertory cinemas, multi-function theatres that alternate between old movies and live events, and some first-run theatres that show past favorites alongside current independent films.
Jayne Houdyshell is an American Tony-winning actress known for her performances on stage and screen. She earned her first Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut as Ann in the play Well in 2006. Since then, she has received four more Tony Award nominations for her performances in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies in 2012, the new play by Lucas Hnath A Doll's House, Part 2 in 2017, and the revival of Meredith Willson's The Music Man in 2022. She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the 2016 play The Humans.
Samm-Art Williams is an American playwright and screenwriter, and a stage and film/TV actor and television producer. Much of his work concerns the African-American experience.
Jane Greenwood is a British costume designer for the stage, television, film, opera, and dance. Born in Liverpool, England, she works both in England and the United States. She has been nominated for the Tony Award for costume design twenty-one times and won the award for her work on The Little Foxes.
The Paris Theater is a 535-seat single-screen art house movie theater, located in Manhattan in New York City. It opened on September 13, 1948. It often showed art films and foreign films in their original languages. Upon the 2016 closure of the Ziegfeld, the Paris became Manhattan's sole-surviving single-screen cinema. Since November 2019, it has been operated by Netflix, playing first-run releases alongside repertory programming.
The Apollo Theatre was a Broadway theatre whose entrance was located at 223 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City, while the theatre proper was on 43rd Street. It was demolished in 1996 and provided part of the site for the new Ford Center for the Performing Arts, now known as the Lyric Theatre.
Queens Theatre, formerly Queens Theatre in the Park and before that Queens Playhouse, is an American professional theatre, located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City, New York. Artistic and Executive Directors have included Joseph S. Kutrzeba, founder and producer; Robert Moss, Sue Lawless, Jeffrey Rosenstock and Ray Cullom, formerly Managing Director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT, and currently, Taryn Sacramone, former Executive Director of Astoria Performing Arts Center.
The Phoenix Theatre was a pioneering off-Broadway theatre in New York City, extant from 1953 to 1982. The Phoenix was founded by impresario Norris Houghton and T. Edward Hambleton. The project was a pioneering effort in the establishment of off-Broadway theatre. Houghton and Hambleton wanted a theatre away from Times Square, that would host a permanent company, abjure the star system, produce four or five plays a season for limited engagements, and with ticket prices much lower than on Broadway.
Village East by Angelika is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the former Yiddish Theatre District, the theater was designed in the Moorish Revival style by Harrison Wiseman and built from 1925 to 1926 by Louis Jaffe. In addition to Yiddish theatre, the theater has hosted off-Broadway shows, burlesque, and movies. Since 1991, it has been operated by Angelika Film Center as a seven-screen multiplex. Both the exterior and interior of the theater are New York City designated landmarks, and the theater is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Garrick Cinema was a 199-seat movie house at 152 Bleecker Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Andy Warhol debuted many of his notable films in this building in the late 1960s. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention played here nightly for 6 months in 1967.
The 55th Street Playhouse—periodically referred to as the 55th Street Cinema and Europa Theatre—was a 253-seat movie house at 154 West 55th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, that opened on May 20, 1927. Many classic art and foreign-language films, including those by Jean Cocteau, Sergei Eisenstein, Federico Fellini, Abel Gance, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg and Orson Welles, were featured at the theater. Later, Andy Warhol presented many of his notable films in this building in the late 1960s. Other notable films were also shown at the theater, including Boys in the Sand (1971) and Him (1974).