Cherry Lane Theatre Gets Appropriate New Address Sept. 29
By Robert Simonson
29 Sep 2003
The historic Cherry Lane Theatre of Greenwich Village has never resided on Cherry Lane, but on the curved downtown thoroughfare known as Commerce Street.
That will change on Sept. 29, when the road is given an honorary street name matching that of the theatre. The change came about due to grassroots support from neighborhood residents and the approval of the local community board, Councilmember Christine C. Quinn of the 3rd District, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The theatre, a former silo, was converted into a theatre in 1924 by poet playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay and a group of her friends, long before the term Off-Broadway was coined. It housed productions by F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Dos Passos in the '20s and works by Gertrude Stein, Odets and O'Casey in the '40s. In the early '50s, it was home to some early productions of the avant garde group The Living Theatre. Beckett's Endgame was produced there in 1957, followed by Happy Days in 1961. In between came the premieres of Edward Albee's The American Dream and Jack Richardson's Gallow Humor. Leroi Jones' Dutchman was staged in 1964. Early works by Lanford Wilson and Sam Shepherd were showcased the next year.
The street was once a rural path lined by the cherry trees of the Gomez farm.
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