Theater for the New City

The story

Theater for the New City named itself after a John V. Lindsay speech imagining a new city for all. Crystal Field, George Bartenieff, Theo Barnes, and Lawrence Kornfeld founded it in 1971 after deciding Judson Poets Theatre had peaked — they wanted a stage for poetic work with a community soul. Opening in March 1971 at Westbeth Artists Community, TNC eventually settled into a 30,000-square-foot, four-theater complex on First Avenue. Forty-three Obie Awards and a Pulitzer Prize later, it remains one of New York's defining off-off-Broadway homes for radical political theater.