The ANTA Washington Square Theatre was a small theatre located on 40 West 4th St., in Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

, in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and run by the American National Theater and Academy

American National Theater and Academy

The American National Theatre and Academy is a non-profit theatre producer and training organization that was established in 1935 to be the official United States national theatre that would be an alternative to the for-profit Broadway houses of the day....

 (ANTA). The theater was located away from the mainstream Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 district, and was originally designed as a prototype for the Vivian Beaumont Theatre

Vivian Beaumont Theatre

The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a theatre located in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The structure was designed by Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen, and Jo Mielziner was responsible for the design of the stage and interior.The Vivian...

. Demolished in 1968, it used a thrust stage

Thrust stage

In theatre, a thrust stage is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its up stage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performers and the audience than a proscenium, while retaining the utility of a backstage area...

 tilted toward the audience, with the audience sitting on three sides of it. It did not employ the use of a curtain.

Several highly regarded plays had their runs at their ANTA Washington Square. Among the most notable were the original productions of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

's plays After the Fall

After the Fall (play)

After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script...

and Incident at Vichy

Incident At Vichy

Incident at Vichy is a 1964 play by American dramatist Arthur Miller focusing upon the subjects of human nature, guilt, fear, and complicity using Vichy France for the setting. Miller, a Jew himself, wrote the one act play about a group of detainees waiting for inspection by German officers during...

, and the 1964 revival of Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...

's Marco Millions, starring Hal Holbrook

Hal Holbrook

Harold Rowe "Hal" Holbrook, Jr. is an American actor. His television roles include Abraham Lincoln in the 1976 TV series Lincoln, Hays Stowe on The Bold Ones: The Senator and Capt. Lloyd Bucher on Pueblo. He is also known for his role in the 2007 film Into the Wild, for which he was nominated for...

 as Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

 and David Wayne

David Wayne

David Wayne was an American actor with a career spanning nearly 50 years.-Early life and career:...

 as Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...

. Quite likely, the most famous show ever to play at the ANTA Washington Square was the smash hit musical Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...

, which began its first New York run there on November 22, 1965 and transferred to the more conventional Martin Beck Theatre in 1968, pending the demolition of the Washington Square Theatre.