The Threshold Theater Company

History

In keeping with its mission, the Threshold Theater Company to date has produced plays translated from Catalan, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish.

The Threshold Theater Company was founded in New York in 1979. Its first production was the English-language premiere of a contemporary Hungarian play by András Sütő. Among the company’s outstanding productions in the 1980s was The Cost of Living by the modern French playwright Yves Jamiaque, featuring a gripping performance by Robert Lansing. Another was Threshold’s English-language premiere of Denis Diderot’s 1781 comic masterpiece Wicked Philanthropy, which enjoyed such success Off-Off Broadway that it re-opened for an Off Broadway run. A high point of the 1990s was Threshold’s acclaimed New York production of Géza Páskándi’s No Conductor, which the Hungarian National Theater invited to Hungary, giving rise to a unique event: an American cast performing a modern Hungarian play in English on one of Budapest’s major stages.

Caught in the Act

The Caught in the Act festival of modern international one-act plays is the Threshold Theater Company’s most memorable acheivement to date. Launched in 1996 and running for four seasons, Caught in the Act turned the main stage of the HERE Arts Center in the Soho district of New York City into a unique and multifaceted mirror of modern culture as reflected in the 20th century’s one-act plays. Each season, the festival presented 12 to 16 works divided into three programs of rotating repertory. Many of these plays represent seminal artistic movements of the century, such as Futurism, Dada, Expressionism, Symbolism, Theater of the Absurd, etc. The authors range from such well-known playwrights as Schnitzler and de Ghelderode, to the unfamiliar. Their plays were brought to life by numerous renowned theater artists, including Jacqueline Brookes, Michael Countryman, Daniel Gerroll, Kim Hunter, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Paul Lazar, Tom Mardirosian, Annie-B Parson, John Rothman, Michael Rupert, Victor Slezak, and Frank Wood, to name but a few of the over one hundred actors and directors who contributed their talents to the Caught in the Act festival, for which the Threshold Theater Company received Off Broadway’s highest distinction, an OBIE Award, in 1998.

Staged Readings

In addition to full productions, Threshold has mounted numerous elaborately staged readings over the years, most of them in collaboration with colleges and universities. They include works by Tibor Déry (Hungarian), Cosmas Koronéos (French), H. Leivick (Yiddish), Tadeus Miciński (Polish), Manuel de Pedrolo (Catalan), Luigi Pirandello (Italian), Evgeny Shvarts (Russian), and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Polish), among many others. The casts of these staged readings have included such distinguished American actors as Gabriel Barre, Kevin Chamberlin, John Michael Higgins, and John Christopher Jones.

Translations

Some of this country’s finest translators have worked with the Threshold Theater Company, including Daniel Gerould, Imre Goldstein, George Wellwarth, and Sophie Wilkins. Most of Threshold’s commissions, 36 translations so far, have been published in anthologies and drama journals.