TheLyceum Theatre was a theatre inNew York City located on Fourth Avenue (nowPark Avenue South) between23rd and 24th Streets inManhattan. It was built in 1885 and operated until 1902, when it was torn down to make way for theMetropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. It was replaced by a newLyceum Theatre on 45th Street. For all but its first two seasons, the theatre was home toDaniel Frohman's Lyceum Theatre Stock Company, which presented many important plays and actors of the day.
The three-story building's auditorium was 75 feet (23 m) deep by 48.5 feet (14.8 m) wide, with a seating capacity of 727: boxes 88, parquet 344, dress circle 172, and balcony 123.Thomas Edison is reported to have personally worked on making it the first theatre lit entirely by electricity (not the first to use electric lights), andLouis Comfort Tiffany designed aspects of the interior. Not all new technologies lasted: for the first season the orchestra rode an "automatic elevator car" into thefly gallery to play in a gallery over the proscenium during performances, but the car was removed in the theatre's second year. Ticket prices initially ranged from $1 to $2.50.[1][2]
Actor, playwright and theatre technology innovatorSteele Mackaye and producerGustave Frohman built the theatre as the base for the Lyceum School of Acting, to be run by them and Franklin H. Sargent. The school quickly became the New York School of Acting and then, by 1888, theAmerican Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA).[3][4] Sargent soon left and after six months Mackaye and Frohman were forced to sell their interests to benefit Tiffany and other creditors.[5] ActressHelen Dauvray then became manager, making her one of the first woman theatrical executives in the U.S. Gustave's brother, theimpresarioDaniel Frohman, took over at the beginning of the theatre's third season and stayed until it was demolished in 1902, when he established theLyceum Theatre on 45th St.[6]
Daniel Frohman ran the Lyceum Theatre Company, astock company with a more or less constant troupe of actors performing several different plays each season. Frohman sought to introduce as many new, “modern plays” as possible. The plays reflected both the oldermelodrama style and the newernaturalistic orrealistic style, common to the last decades before the motion picture era. The Lyceum Company also sent productions on the road with full complements of actors, sets, musicians, crew, and publicists. (Prior to this, lead actors tended to tour alone and work with local actors and musicians, with results of varying artistic quality.)[7][8] From 1886 until 1890,David Belasco worked for the Lyceum Company asstage manager (in today's terms, director or artistic director),[9] co-wrote three of the company's productions withHenry Churchill de Mille, and taught at the acting school. In January 1899, three years before the old Lyceum shut down, Daniel Frohman moved the Lyceum Theatre Company to Daly's Theatre.[10] He and his brotherCharles Frohman continued to produce plays at the Lyceum after the stock company moved.[11]
Over 80 plays were presented at the Lyceum, not counting dozens of benefits, concerts, lectures, amateur and student productions, short-stay touring performances, and revivals of these plays inrepertory. (WP=world premiere, AP=American premiere.)[11][13][14][15][16]
Belasco, David, "My Life's Story",Hearst's Magazine, serialized, vols. 24–28, Mar. 1914-Dec. 1915.
Brown, Thomas Allston,A History of the New York Stage From the First Performance in 1732 to 1901, vol. III, (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company), 1903.
Chapman, John, and Garrison P. Sherwood, eds.,The Best Plays of 1894-1899, (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company), 1955.
Frohman, Daniel, ‘’Memories of a Manager: Reminiscences of the Old Lyceum and of Some Players of the Last Quarter Century,’’ (London [printed in NY]: W. Heinemann), 1911.
Mantle, Burns, and Garrison P. Sherwood, eds.,The Best Plays of 1899-1909, (Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company), 1944.
Wickham, Glynne,A History of the Theatre, 2nd Edition, (London: Phaedon Press Limited), 1999.
Winter, William, ed. by William Jefferson Winter,The Life of David Belasco, Volume 1, (New York: Moffat, Yard), 1918.
