ANTA Washington Square Theatre

The ANTA Washington Square Theatre was a theatre located on 40 West Fourth Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. It was run by the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA) and initial home to the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center from early 1964 to the completion of the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1965. The theatre, not to be confused with the ANTA Theatre (later August Wilson Theatre) on 52nd Street, was located away from the mainstream Broadway district. Closed in 1968, it used a thrust stage tilted toward the audience, with the audience sitting on three sides of it. It did not employ the use of a curtain. Robert Whitehead founded ANTA to create "a national theatre as a guiding spirit". He needed a location, as he had both a company of actors and commissioned two playwrights (Arthur Miller & S. N. Behrman), and he needed one quickly. New York University leased land to them, with ANTA having to foot the bill, an estimated $525,000. Marvin Carlson described the theatre as "characterless steel box, about 20 feet high and more or less square, painted a mustard yellow and from the outside, suggesting a warehouse or storage facility. The simple entrance had a marquee bearing the name ANTA". The theatre, which was not intended to be permanent, had a seating capacity of 1,158, and opened in 1963 with previews of Miller's After the Fall. Another observer praised

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