Laurie Beechman Theatre

The story

Bruce Willis was a bartender here before the venue became what it is. Opened in 1983 by Steve Olsen in the basement of the West Bank Cafe, the 90-seat dinner theater sits inside Manhattan Plaza, a complex built specifically to house people active in New York's theater scene — which meant Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sean Penn were regulars. Lewis Black authored forty plays here over fourteen years as playwright in residence. More than 1,500 one-act plays have been performed in a room that began as an experiment in jazz and cabaret.