Article Summary #13

Classical Theater to be Built in New York City

Isherwood, Charles, “Envisioning Shakespeare at Home in New York,” New York Times, February 10, 2010

The Royal Shakespeare Company will install a temporary classical theater inside the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The theater will be open for six weeks in the summer of 2011. It will be a replication of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 900-seat theater and feature Shakespeare plays. After the production, the company plans to store the theater in a currently unidentified location in the United States to use for future productions in Britain and the United States.

Charles Isherwood, the writer of the article, hopes that the Royal Shakespeare Company will allow the theater to remain located inside the armory after its six-week production. He would like to see a theater company started there as well. By doing so, New York would be given the opportunity to create “a classical repertory company of international stature.”

Isherwood explains why the Park Avenue Armory is a good place and in a good location for the theater. “It’s a gloriously dramatic building, acoustically workable and just slightly down-at-heels,” he describes. The armory is located in the Upper East Side of New York City where there are numerous attractions, including museums and restaurants. But the area is missing performing arts, so the building of the theater in the armory will fill that void.

There have been several plans to establish a classical theater in New York City in the past, but they were unsuccessful for the most part. Tony Randall’s National Actors Theater, which did well when it was first launched, slowly fell apart over the course of a decade.