Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater
Pioneer of theatre in the round, now three stages under Bing Thom's glass and timber canopy.
Arena Stage was founded in 1950 by Zelda Fichandler, Thomas Fichandler and Edward Mangum as one of the first resident professional companies in the United States outside New York. It moved to the Southwest waterfront in 1961, into a purpose-built theatre in the round by Harry Weese that seats 683 on four sides of a square platform. The company was an early force in the American regional theatre movement and in 1976 became the first company outside New York to send a production to Broadway.
A rebuilding completed in 2010 by the Canadian architect Bing Thom enclosed the Fichandler Stage and the 1970 Kreeger Theater within a single glazed lobby under a sweeping cantilevered roof carried on slender parallel-strand timber columns, and added the 200-seat Kogod Cradle for new work. The company concentrates on American plays and musicals, commissioning new writing and reviving twentieth-century repertoire, and runs education and playwriting programmes from the same building.
Highlights
- Fichandler Stage, an arena stage seating 683 on four sides
- Bing Thom's 2010 glass lobby under a cantilevered timber-columned roof
- Kogod Cradle, a 200-seat oval space for new plays
- Founded 1950 and central to the American regional theatre movement
