Minetta Lane Theatre

The story

The theatre takes its name from a brook — Minetta Brook, which once flowed beneath this stretch of Greenwich Village before the city buried it. When the building opened in 1984, Helen Hayes cut the ribbon and Mayor Edward I. Koch declared it Minetta Lane Theater Week. Its first full production was 3 Guys Naked from the Waist Down in 1985. With 391 seats split between orchestra and balcony, the New York Theatre Guide calls it an intimate space — the kind of room where off-Broadway work, from Marvin's Room to Jeffrey, finds its sharpest edges.