To spot the Circle in the Square Theatre, look down and to your right-it's tucked away in the basement of the modern glass Paramount Plaza on 50th Street, its entrance marked by escalators leading you below the city’s surface.
Welcome to the Circle in the Square Theatre! Standing here, imagine the buzz just below your feet-not the noisy horses from old New York, thankfully. Instead, you’re above the only Broadway theater built like an arena, where the stage thrusts boldly into a sea of red seats on three sides. The circle’s design was inspired by advice from a theater critic: the moment you enter, the stage immediately grabs your attention. Sounds dramatic, right? Just wait, the drama runs deep here!
The Circle started with a group of dreamers in the early 1950s who had little more than a handful of cash, a lot of passion, and a wish to bring every kind of art onto the stage. Back then, they didn’t have the budget for Broadway, so they set up shop in a converted old nightclub at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. The rent was a whopping $1,000 a month-not cheap for a group whose first paycheck was $320! Their first opening was delayed by months, thanks to a far-too-familiar story: bureaucracy and red tape. In the meantime, they could only get a license to run as a cabaret-maybe the actors practiced more on table service than lines.
Finally, with a little luck and support, they put on their first play, “Dark of the Moon.” It was a gamble, because Off-Broadway theater was hardly the hot ticket in town. Then came the review that changed everything. With just a few words from the New York Times, suddenly the Circle was the place to see and be seen-even in steamy July, when no sane New Yorker wanted to sit in a theater before air conditioning.
As the years passed, the Circle became known as the beating heart of the Off-Broadway scene, producing revivals by legendary playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Jean Giraudoux. Out of these intimate, experimental setups came actors whose names echo through Broadway history-Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, James Earl Jones, and so many more.
But if running a theater was never easy, running the Circle was like juggling on a tightrope. They had a knack for picking sites destined for demolition-when the Sheridan Square spot finally closed in 1960, they migrated to Bleecker Street, building another “in the round” sanctuary out of a former opera house. It wasn’t long before developers had their eyes on this spot, too. The company bounced from venue to venue, from Greenwich Village all the way to Washington, D.C., always keeping one foot on the stage and the other in a financial bear trap.
By the 1970s, Broadway itself came knocking. The Circle got its permanent home right here, inside a basement unlike any other, beneath the slick Paramount Plaza. Opening in 1972, the new space thrilled with its thrust stage-one of only two in all of Broadway. Here, the actors are right up close; there are only ten rows, so nobody in the audience can nap unnoticed. It wasn’t always easy for directors or critics to figure out this unusual setup, but the proximity created a kind of electricity between performers and theatergoers that you just don’t find elsewhere.
For years, the Circle operated as a nonprofit, scrounging for donations and putting on three or four shows a year. Some years were rough-like the 1990s, when the theater almost drowned in debt, lost staff, and was forced into bankruptcy. But in true showbiz fashion, the curtain never completely fell. The Circle rebounded, shifting to a commercial model and introducing a whole new generation to this unique space-most recently with crowd-pleasers like “Fun Home” and “Once on This Island.”
Today, Circle in the Square is the only Broadway theater that isn’t operated by the major theater landlords-it stands apart, fiercely independent, keeping the spirit of its founders alive. <sfx>gentle clapping and stage crew sweeping up<\sfx> So take a bow for discovering a place where every seat is close to the action-Circle in the Square isn’t just a theater, it’s Broadway’s boldest experiment that refuses to follow the script.
If you're curious about the design, off-broadway predecessors or the school, the chat section below is the perfect place to seek clarification.
