The Neighborhood Playhouse

Abstract

Although Sanford Meisner was associated with it for fifty-five years, the Neighborhood Playhouse was not a Meisner creation. It was founded in 1915 as an off-Broadway theatre and acquired an august reputation as the home of nonrealistic, experimental plays. The theatre ceased production in 1927, becoming the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre on the same Lower East Side premises in 1928. The more famous graduates, such as Dylan McDermott, Tony Randall, Robert Duvall, Joanne Woodward, Eli Wallach, Diane Keaton, Gregory Peck, Christopher Lloyd, Steve McQueen, David Mamet, Mary Steen- burgen, Sydney Pollack, Jeff Goldblum, and others, do not begin to reveal the huge number of Neighborhood Playhouse graduates.