After 28 years of Off-Broadway glory, the most recent marked by financial and political strife, the Circle Repertory Theatre has closed up shop. Artistic director Austin Pendleton cited "the sheer lack of money and the lack of ways to get any more of it" as a major reason for the company's demise.
Pendleton had headed the theatre during its final and most desperate incarnation. He was named artistic director in February 1995, after founding member Tanya Berezin resigned. He inherited a debt of roughly $800,000 accumulated over several years.
Much of Pendleton and executive director Milan Stitt's time was taken up with keeping the institution afloat. For the 1995-96 season, the theatre moved from its longtime Sheridan Square home to Circle In The Square Downtown on Bleecker Street. By this season, however, it had retreated to a small space next to its offices on Broadway between Houston and Bleecker streets.
The future began to look hopeful at the beginning of last season, when Laurence Fishburne's play "Riff Raff" won good reviews and played to packed audiences. The show, however, had to close prematurely when one of its stars, the rapper Heavy D, dropped out due to illness. Circle Rep's other productions for the season were not well-received.
Any hope for this season was extinguished when the theatre's first offering, "900 Oneonta," failed to garner critical approval.
"I feel sad for everybody who's ever worked there," said Pendleton. "So much great stuff has poured out of there. It really fulfilled a function, that place. It really provided hope and encouragement to young American playwrights, and it did that for 30 years."
Circle Rep was founded in 1969 by Berezin, Marshall Mason, Lanford Wilson, and the late Rob Thirkield, and was known for fostering the work of new American playwrights. It was most famous as the home of much of Wilson's work, including "Burn This," "The Mound Builders," and the Talley trilogy, but also produced plays by Albert Innaurato, Craig Lucas, Jon Robin Baitz, Jules Feiffer, and William M. Hoffman. Pendleton said he did not know how the theatre's debt, which now stands at $700,000, would