Uplifting the Power of the Audience at Cherry Lane Theatre
One year from now, as theatres re-emerge, the most historic stage in New York City, Cherry Lane Theatre, will unveil an exciting community-wide theatre project.
The 2022-2023 season marks the one-hundred-year Anniversary of Cherry Lane Theatre. Mary Geerlof, principal company member, is currently hard at work in planning the “Cherry Lane Retrospective: Revisits and Reimaginations Program.”
Beginning in January 2022, Cherry Lane will offer one Staged Reading per month from their incredible one hundred year Production history. They’ll begin with plays from the 1920s and work their way through each of their notable decades. Expect to see exciting readings like The Vegetable (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Subway (Elmer Rice), Endgame (Samuel Beckett), and To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (Lorraine Hansberry).
Ms. Geerlof is collaborating with theatre historians so that everyone can get a full sense of the history and culture that surrounds each play. Uplifting the power of the audience is of utmost importance to this project. Small restoration projects are currently happening to promote audience involvement at talk-backs directly after certain performances.
Cherry Lane, situated at the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village on 38 Commerce Street, was first erected as a brewery in 1836. It later served as a tobacco warehouse.
In 1923, theatre artist Evelyn Vaughn led William S. Rainey and Reginald Travers to commission a well-known scenic designer, Cleon Throckmorton, to convert the box factory into Cherry Lane Playhouse. Edna St. Vincent Millay later joined the original founders to lend support.
The Downtown Theatre Movement, The Living Theatre, and Theatre of the Absurd found their home at Cherry Lane Theatre. A “village jewel” and “ground-breaker of the American Stage,” Cherry Lane featured works from literary and dramatic giants such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmer Rice, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Lorraine Hansberry, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Leroi Jones, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Joe Orton, and David Mamet.
Cherry Lane cherishes its audience members and wants to hear more stories about their personal connections to Cherry Lane. When it’s safe to gather in-person again, Cherry Lane Theatre wants to show their profound reverence for actors, directors, dramaturgs, playwrights, theatre crew, artistic staff, and their audience. They view theatre as a collaborative art where people do more than see a play – they experience it.
This Pandemic has changed our lives enormously. We’ve collectively witnessed loss and felt grief on a cellular level. In many ways, Coronavirus has caused humans to pause and reflect on the importance of each and every life.
Cherry Lane Theatre wishes to “give back” to the theatre by engaging artists and audiences in a new way. Just writing about this project fills me with hope! Cherry Lane Theatre strives to create theatre that inspires an audience, and an audience that inspires the theatre.