Circle Repertory Company Theater

History

The Circle Theater, later the Circle Repertory Company, or simply Circle Rep, was founded in 1969 by four Caffe Cino veterans, including playwright Lanford Wilson and director Marshall W. Mason, who served as artistic director from the founding until 1987.

The founders of Circle Rep sought to bring together a group of artists involved with all aspects of theater who would work together to create plays. In 1974, the company leased the former garage that had previously been the Nut Club night club and then the Sheridan Square Playhouse. This was the company’s home until it disbanded in 1994. Although the company presented productions of classic plays (including a revival of Tennessee Williams’ first produced play Battle of Angels), it specialized in new work, often in a lyrical realist vein. New York Times critic Mel Gussow asserted in 1974 that Circle Rep was a “chief provider of new American plays.”

The company was especially welcoming to plays with gay subject matter, notable especially during its early years, when positive portrayals of gay characters and gay-themed plays were still rare, even Off-Broadway. The Circle Rep presented many of Wilson’s realist plays, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley’s Folly (1979) and his Fifth of July (1978), with its central gay characters. When the latter moved to the Apollo Theater, on 42nd Street, in 1980, it gave Broadway audiences their first experience with a passionate kiss between two men. All of Wilson’s plays for the company were directed by Mason, who he had first worked with at Cafe La MaMa. Mason also directed many other works for Circle Rep.

The company also premiered works by other gay playwrights and/or with gay themes, including:

• My Cup Runneth Over (1978), the one-act, by Robert Patrick
• Reckless (1988) by Craig Lucas
• Prelude to a Kiss (1990), an AIDS allegory, by Craig Lucas
• Three Hotels (1993) by Jon Robin Baitz
• Destiny of Me (1992, at the Louise Lortel Theater on Christopher Street) by Larry Kramer
• Gemini (1977), the revised definitive version, which soon moved to the Little Theater on Broadway, by Albert Innaurato
• Feedlot (1977) by Patrick Meyers
• As Is (1985), a pioneering AIDS play by William M. Hoffman that later moved to Broadway’s Lyceum Theater (Drama Desk and Obie Award winner)

Among the LGBT actors who appeared on the Circle Rep’s stage are Farley Granger, Jonathan Hadary, Cherry Jones, Joe Mantello, and Cynthia Nixon. Many of the Circle Rep’s plays, including those by Wilson, had sets by prize-winning designer John Lee Beatty.

Entry by Andrew S. Dolkart, project director (August 2020).

NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.