Circle in the Square Theatre

About

The Circle in the Square Theatre (colloquially the Circle) is a Broadway theater at 235 West 50th Street, within the basement of Paramount Plaza, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The current Broadway theater, completed in 1972, is the successor of an off-Broadway theater of the same name, co-founded around 1950 by a group that included Theodore Mann and José Quintero. The Broadway venue was designed by Allen Sayles; it originally contained 650 seats and uses a thrust stage that extends into the audience on three sides. The theater had 776 seats as of 2026.

The Circle in the Square Theatre was named for its first location at 5 Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, which opened in February 1951 and was operated as a theater in the round. During the 1950s and 1960s, the theater became what Women's Wear Daily described as the "center of Off-Broadway". The Sheridan Square theater was closed temporarily between 1954 and 1955 and was demolished in 1960. The company then moved to 159 Bleecker Street, known as Circle in the Square Downtown; that location continued to operate until about 1995. In addition to its Sheridan Square and Bleecker Street locations, the Circle hosted shows at other locations such as Ford's Theatre and the Henry Miller's Theatre.