Irving Place Theatre
[1] The original building on the site was Irving Hall, which opened in 1860 as a venue for balls, lectures, and concerts.
[11] During World War II it presented a steady program of mixed bills of Soviet propaganda and French films, as well as weekly folk dance sessions.
Ethnic stages were primarily designed to have immigrant-themed works for recently arrived immigrant audiences.
[14] Despite the overt, clear presence of immigrant communities all over America, the ethnic stage was hidden and closed-off from outsiders.
[14] Despite this division, ethnic theater prospered in the face of continuous mass immigration, lasting several decades or a century.
[16] Ethnic stages such as Yiddish and Italian theater sought to preserve cherished aspects of old-world culture.
[16] Through the celebration of shared values, ethnic theaters gave immigrants a sense of community and solidarity in the face of increasingly chaotic and diverse everyday life in the city.
[17] Though Conried aimed to primarily attract New York's German-speaking population, not all were regular theatre-goers, so he devised a program with a frequent change of bill to expand his audience.
[18] Each week he presented three or more different plays ranging from classics to comedies, and his theater was acclaimed for having a varied repertory.
[18] Musical plays were also presented, especially those popular on German stages such as Kumarker und Picarde and Das Versprechen hinter’m Herd (The Promise Behind the Hearth).
[19] Conried sought to expand and educate his audience through the institution of an outreach program in eastern universities, providing performances of the German classics and comedies to students from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia.
In 1901, sponsored by Yale's German Department, Conried's company performed Lessing's Minna von Barheim in New Haven.
[23] In theory, however, Conried had envisioned a theater solely dedicated to serious drama, connecting back to German roots.
[25] Under Christians, the New York Times remarked on how the Irving Place Theater embodied German patriotism in the U.S. before America's entrance into the war.
[29] The idea to establish a Yiddish theater came from the immigrant community who wanted to combat the effects of shund (trash) popular entertainment.
[32] The new theater would find success with Peretz Hershbein's The Forgotten Nook and The Blacksmith's Daughter, both of which emphasized on the idyllic, village life, something that resonated strongly with immigrants.
[31] Restricted immigration and a demographic movement away from New York City's old neighborhoods affected the Yiddish theater's prosperity.
