Off-Broadway is getting a new venue. Elysabeth Kleinhans, President of The Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, Inc., announced the construction of a new off-Broadway complex, 59E59 Theaters, to be located at 59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues.
59E59 Theaters will house a 199-seat off-Broadway theater, a 99-seat showcase theater and a 50-seat black box theater and screening room. Primary Stages, which has made its home at a 99-seat theater at 354 W. 45th Street for 17 years, will be the resident company in the 199-seat space for eight months of the year. “I am excited about the fact that we can now do plays with larger casts than seven people and maybe even plays that have more than one location,” Primary Stages Executive Producer Casey Childs told Broadway.com. “I [hope now] playwrights might not be so apt to say to me, 'You can't do the play because your stage is too small.'”
59E59 Theaters will house a 199-seat off-Broadway theater, a 99-seat showcase theater and a 50-seat black box theater and screening room. Primary Stages, which has made its home at a 99-seat theater at 354 W. 45th Street for 17 years, will be the resident company in the 199-seat space for eight months of the year. “I am excited about the fact that we can now do plays with larger casts than seven people and maybe even plays that have more than one location,” Primary Stages Executive Producer Casey Childs told Broadway.com. “I [hope now] playwrights might not be so apt to say to me, 'You can't do the play because your stage is too small.'”
Childs added that everything about the new space will be superior to what Primary Stages has now. “It will be a whole new scale for us: a bigger stage, a better equipped backstage, far better audience services and just much better systems [in general],” he explained.
Construction on 59E59 Theaters, designed by Leo Modrcin of uRed Architecture, is expected to be completed in time for a January 2004 opening.
