Circle in the Square Theatre

The story

A Broadway theater built into a basement might seem like a compromise, but Circle in the Square made the underground its signature. Co-founded around 1950 by Theodore Mann and José Quintero, it began at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village — a theater in the round that Women's Wear Daily would call the "center of Off-Broadway" by the 1960s. The name stuck even after the original space was demolished in 1960. The current thrust stage, pushing into the audience on three sides, carries that same refusal of distance into every performance.