The Connelly Theater is an

Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

theater at 220 East 4th Street in the East Village of

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

in New York City. It was originally built in the 1860s as the choir hall for an orphanage. The theater consists of a 200-seat main auditorium and a smaller 50-seat black box rented from the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York The Archdiocese of New York () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church located in the State of New York. It encompasses the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island in New York City and the count ...

, by the Cornelia Connelly Center, an education non-profit that also operates a middle school in the building. In the 2010s and early 2020s, the theater became a celebrated off-Broadway venue, with programming curated by Director & General Manager Josh Luxenberg. In 2024, the Archdiocese of New York began restricting the theater from staging shows that were not approved by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, leading to Luxenberg's resignation and the shuttering of the theater as a space for public performance.

References

East Village, Manhattan Off-Broadway theaters {{Manhattan-struct-stub