Roundabout Launches Seat-Naming Campaign at Studio 54

Roundabout Theatre Company's Artistic Director Todd Haimes is proud to announce the launch of a seat naming initiative to support the $32 million capital campaign - Building Partnerships for Artistic Excellence: A Campaign for Roundabout Theatre Company.   

Click on www.studio54seats.org to view the theatre's seats and the stage with a 360˚ tour of the theatre.  This flash-based, 360˚degree panorama website is the first of its kind for a not-for-profit theatre company.  Www.studio54seats.org uses the latest flash technology married seamlessly with images and sound. 

Visitors can explore the historic space with a swoop of the mouse. Once a seat is selected, the visitor can name a seat – both in virtual reality and in the real Studio 54. Prices range from $1,200 - $15,000 per seat. Also available to be named are select seats noted in honor of each actor who starred as "Sally Bowles" or the "Emcee" in Roundabout's landmark production of Cabaret staged at Studio 54.  The musical changed the face of the institution, and its success gave Roundabout the financial backing to purchase Studio 54 as their permanent home.  The 28 actors will be commemorated for his or her performance with their name appearing on the armrest and the donor's name will be on display on the back of the seat. 

Roundabout Theatre Company partnered with New York based interactive agency Continuity to create the site. Roundabout has earmarked $5 million of this campaign to create an endowment fund to begin securing the theatre's long-term financial stability.  The endowment is divided into specific funds including the Todd Haimes Fund for Artistic Initiatives and the Arts Education Endowment.  Funds from this initiative will also be applied to the requirements needed to receive a $1 million grant awarded by The Kresge Foundation.  For more information on naming a seat, click on www.studio54seats.org.

Studio 54 provides Roundabout Theatre Company an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for musical and special event productions.  The theatre was built in 1927 as an opera house and the first production was La Bohème.  In 1930 it was renamed the New Yorker Theatre with the intention of becoming a theatre for plays.  In 1976 the space was converted into a famous nightclub called Studio 54.  Roundabout restored the venue into an environmental theatre space for the Tony Award-winning production of Cabaret in November 1998 after a crane accident destroyed the Henry Miller's Theatre where the production had opened.

The Kresge Foundation is a national foundation with $3 billion in assets.  Through its grant making programs, The Kresge Foundation seeks to strengthen nonprofit organizations by catalyzing their growth, connecting them to their stakeholders, and challenging greater support through grants.  The Foundation's core grant making activity is its Capital Challenge Grants program.  In this program, the Foundation focuses on opportunities to strengthen leadership and giving through challenge grants for capital projects.  

Roundabout is at the start of its journey to create an endowment to secure its future.  Once established, the goal of the endowment is to provide a steady, predictable flow of income to support the institution over time, while the principal itself is never spent and, ideally, grows.  The importance of the endowment lies in its permanence.  It is Roundabout's safeguard against future, unforeseeable financial challenges, a shield in a merciless commercial marketplace, and allows the theatre to take advantage of future opportunities for growth and achievement.  It is a way to ensure Roundabout will be here, presenting great theatre, for generations to come.

The endowment fund, which will be the mainstay of Roundabout's future security, is a priority for the company as it continues to build and strengthen its financial base.  From humble beginnings more than forty-two years ago and with clarity of purpose and ambition, Roundabout Theatre has steadily grown into a respected leader in the American theatre and the arts community as a whole.  With its excellence, capacity, stability, and artistic influence, Roundabout is poised to continue playing a starring role, now and in the future.  

With a strengthened endowment Roundabout will be able to secure its footing and ensure it can continue for many years to provide consistently excellent productions in the context of a healthy, stable company, while also having the agility and reserves to respond to changing societal needs, educational imperatives, and artistic opportunities.  

At this decisive moment in the history of the company, we seek partners who believe, as we do, that theatre is a joyful, powerful, integral part of our individual and shared lives—partners who share a vision of a stable and strong Roundabout continuing to make deeper and broader contributions to theatre and society in the decades ahead and beyond.

Roundabout Theatre Company's mission has remained consistent for 42 years.  At the very heart of the not-for-profit company is a commitment to re-energize classic plays and musicals by teaming great theatrical works with the industry's finest artists, providing great theatre and a quality experience to their subscribers.  Each year, over 40,000 subscribers see up to eight new productions at Roundabout all at a cost well below Broadway box office prices.  An equally important core value of the organization is its dedication to providing the highest possible level of customer service to its audiences and loyal subscribers.  Friendly and welcoming staff, comfortable state-of-the-art venues, audience enrichment programs, and initiatives such as ACCESS ROUNDABOUT, are all an integral part of the Roundabout experience.

Roundabout Theatre Company currently produces at three permanent theatres each of which is designed specifically to enhance the needs of the Roundabout's mission.  The off Broadway home, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre's Laura Pels Theatre with its simple sophisticated design is perfectly suited to showcasing new plays while the grandeur of its Broadway home, American Airlines Theatre, sets the ideal stage for the classics.  Roundabout's Studio 54 provides an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for its musical and special event productions.  Together these three distinctive venues serve to enhance the work on each of its stages.

Roundabout productions are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts; and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.  American Express is the 2006-2007 season sponsor of the Roundabout Theatre Company.  American Airlines is the official airline of Roundabout Theatre Company. 

Roundabout Theatre Company's season includes Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps adapted by Patrick Barlow, directed by Maria Aitken; Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George starring Daniel Evans & Jenna Russell, directed by Sam Buntrock; Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses starring Laura Linney & Ben Daniels, directed by Rufus Norris; Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo, directed by Walter Bobbie; Rodgers & Hart's Pal Joey, directed by Joe Mantello.  

Roundabout Theatre Company's critically acclaimed Broadway production of Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men has extended its multi-award winning touring production for a second year.  Directed by Tony-nominated director Scott Ellis (Curtains) and starring Richard Thomas as "Juror #8," the play will appear in numerous cities in the 2007-2008 season including Portland, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Fort Lauderdale and Charlotte.

Roundabout Theatre Company subscriptions and single tickets are available for purchase by calling (212) 719-1300 or online at www.roundabouttheatre.org.