Manhattan Ensemble Theatre ("MET") was an award-winning, [1] [2] [3] nonprofit, theatre company based in New York City from 1999 to 2007. The company was founded as an Off-Broadway, Equity repertory company in 1999 by writer-producer David Fishelson with the stated mission of creating theatrical adaptations of stories found in fiction, journalism, film, biography and memoir. [4] [5] [6]
In its short history, MET featured several well-known stars in its productions, including Jim Parsons (CBS's The Big Bang Theory ), [17] Mireille Enos (AMC's The Killing ), [6] and Robert Prosky ( Hill Street Blues , Broadcast News , Dead Man Walking ). [9] [18]
The 2003-4 season saw frequent transfers of shows from the 140-seat MET home, as described in Playbill :
With Golda's Balcony (which opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway on Oct. 15), MET has two hits based on the lives of renowned historical figures. Its first offering this season, Hank Williams: Lost Highway, about the troubled country singer and composer, was hailed and quickly transferred following an extended run. It is currently playing the Little Shubert Off-Broadway. (In fact, the runaway success of MET's first two shows caused the nonprofit to postpone its third selection until the (2004-05) season.) [19]
From 2002 to 2006, MET earned 31 nominations (winning 11) from various theatre award agencies, including the Tony, [20] the Drama Desk, [21] the Obie, [1] the Outer Critics Circle, [22] the Lucille Lortel, [23] the Drama League, [24] the Blackburn Prize, [25] Time Out New York Magazine's Best in Theatre (4 times) [26] and the Touring Broadway awards. [3] Notable reviews came from Anthony DeCurtis in Rolling Stone for Lost Highway ("I was genuinely surprised, even stunned ... by Hank Williams: Lost Highway. ... a rare achievement in any musical theater that I've ever seen"), [27] from John Simon in New York Magazine ("Golda's Balcony is the perfect merging of playwright, actress and character"), [28] and from John Lahr for Nine Parts of Desire in The New Yorker ("An example of how art can remake the world"). [29]
The company was located in a 140-seat theatre in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood at 55 Mercer Street (corner of Broome Street) until early 2007 when, according to The New York Times,
The success of (MET's) show Golda's Balcony — and the time demanded by transferring the show to Broadway in 2003, then taking it on the road — had forced (Fishelson) ... to find someone to take over the 10 years remaining on his theater's lease. [30]
In 2006, the Culture Project, a 10 year-old downtown nonprofit theater at the time, bought the remaining years on the 55 Mercer Street theater's lease. [30]
Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been seen on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. Lane has received numerous awards, including three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, the Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by The Village Voice newspaper to theater artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after the 2014 ceremony, the American Theatre Wing became the joint presenter and administrative manager of the Obie Awards. The Obie Awards are considered off-Broadway's highest honor, similar to the Tony Awards for Broadway productions.
William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for The Miracle Worker in 1959, which he later adapted for the film version in 1962.
William Mills Irwin is an American actor, choreographer, clown, and comedian. He began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He has made a number of appearances on film and television, and he won a Tony Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He also worked as a choreographer on Broadway and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 1989 for Largely New York. He is also known as Mr. Noodle on the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World, and he appeared in the Sesame Street film short Does Air Move Things?. He has regularly appeared as Dr. Peter Lindstrom on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and had a recurring role as "The Dick & Jane Killer" on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. From 2017 to 2019, he appeared as Cary Loudermilk on the FX television series Legion.
The Golem is a 1921 "dramatic poem in eight scenes" by H. Leivick. The story is a reworking of a legend of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal, a great rabbi of Prague. In the legend, he animates a golem, a being crafted from inanimate material. The same legends had provided the ground for Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel of the same name.
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Terri Sue "Tovah" Feldshuh is an American actress, singer, and playwright. She has been a Broadway star for fifty years, earning four Tony Award nominations. She has also received two Emmy Award nominations for Holocaust and Law & Order, and appeared in such films as A Walk on the Moon, She's Funny That Way, and Kissing Jessica Stein. In 2015–2016, she played the role of Deanna Monroe on AMC's television adaptation of The Walking Dead.
The St. James Theatre, originally Erlanger's Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 246 West 44th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1927, it was designed by Warren and Wetmore in a neo-Georgian style and was constructed for A. L. Erlanger. It has 1,709 seats across three levels and is operated by Jujamcyn Theaters. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
The Shubert Theatre is a Broadway theater at 225 West 44th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1913, the theater was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts in the Italian Renaissance style and was built for the Shubert brothers. Lee and J. J. Shubert had named the theater in memory of their brother Sam S. Shubert, who died in an accident several years before the theater's opening. It has 1,502 seats across three levels and is operated by The Shubert Organization. The facade and interior are New York City landmarks.
The John Golden Theatre, formerly the Theatre Masque and Masque Theater, is a Broadway theater at 252 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1927, the Golden Theatre was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in a Spanish style and was built for real-estate developer Irwin S. Chanin. It has 800 seats across two levels and is operated by the Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, formerly the Biltmore Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 261 West 47th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1925, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in the neo-Renaissance style and was constructed for Irwin Chanin. It has 650 seats across two levels and is operated by the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC). The auditorium interior is a New York City landmark, and the theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since 2008, the theater has been named for Broadway publicist Samuel J. Friedman, whose family was a major donor to MTC.
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune is a two-character play by Terrence McNally that was first performed off-Broadway in 1987.
Golda's Balcony is a play by William Gibson.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Jean Isabel Smith, credited professionally as J. Smith-Cameron, is an American actress. She gained prominence for her roles as Janet Talbot in the Sundance TV series Rectify (2013–2016) and Gerri Kellman in the HBO series Succession (2018–2023), the latter of which earned her two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Thomas Robert Kitt is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and musician. For his score for the musical Next to Normal, he shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey. He has also won two Tony Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Next to Normal, as well as Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations for If/Then and SpongeBob SquarePants. He has been nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, winning one, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Jagged Little Pill in 2021.
Donald Ragan Stephenson IV, known as Don Stephenson, is an American actor and stage director. He has numerous credits on both television and in the theatre.
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David J. Fishelson is an American producer, playwright, and director for film, theatre, television and radio, based in Manhattan since 1982. He is best known for being the lead producer of Golda's Balcony, the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history (2003–05)—which he also produced as a feature motion picture, Golda's Balcony , that was popular in over 75 film festivals in 2019-20)—as well as being the founder/producer of Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, an award-winning Off-Broadway theatre company located in SoHo, New York City. As a filmmaker, his work has been broadcast on PBS, exhibited theatrically, and selected for 87 international film festivals. As a theatre producer and playwright, his work has garnered 31 nominations from the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Obie, Drama League, Lortel, Blackburn Prize and Touring Broadway awards organizations, while landing on Time Out NY's year-end "Best in Theatre" list on 4 different occasions.
Golda's Balcony is a 2019 American biographical film based on the 2003 play Golda's Balcony, written by William Gibson. The film captures a solo performance by Tovah Feldshuh — who plays Golda Meir and numerous other characters in the course of the film's eighty-six minutes — during a multi-camera, video recording in front of a live audience in May 2003. The multi-camera video recording was edited into a motion picture in early 2019, after which it went on to become an Official Selection at numerous film festivals in North America. As of 2020, the film had been selected for 75 Film Festivals in North and South American, as well as Europe and Asia and, in addition, had won twenty Audience Choice Awards as "Best Feature" among the festivals to which it had been invited.