Roundabout's Home on Broadway Officially Renamed the Todd Haimes Theatre

Roundabout Theatre Company revealed this evening during a dedication ceremony that the 104-year-old Selwyn Theatre (227 West 42nd Street), previously known as the American Airlines Theatre, is now officially named the Todd Haimes Theatre. First announced in June 2023, the renaming is in recognition of the late artistic director and chief executive’s extraordinary dedication to the institution he called home, and his enormous contributions to Roundabout and the entire theatre community. Haimes passed away at 66 years of age on April 19, 2023 from complications of osteosarcoma.

The most recent Broadway renaming took place in November, when the Brooks Atkinson Theatre was renamed the Lena Horne Theatre, and before that in September when the Cort Theatre was officially renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre.

The first production to take the stage at the newly renamed Todd Haimes Theatre is the first Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Tony Award & Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable, directed by Scott Ellis, and starring Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber, with performances beginning Friday, February 2. Closing the 2023- 2024 season at the Todd Haimes Theatre is Home by Samm-Art Williams, directed by Kenny Leon—and featured in Roundabout’s first Refocus Project in 2021, aimed to transform the American theatre canon— beginning performances Friday, May 17.

Roundabout recently announced the upcoming 2024-2025 season—the first complete season at the Todd Haimes Theatre under the leadership of Interim Artistic Director Scott Ellis, including: the Broadway premiere of Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, directed by Leigh Silverman, starring Daniel Dae Kim; the Broadway premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize & Obie Award-winning English, directed by Knud

Adams; and a new jazz-infused, New Orleans-style production of The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, adapted by Rupert Holmes, choreographed by Warren Carlyle, directed by Scott Ellis.

The Todd Haimes Theatre represents the vision of Haimes’ leadership at Roundabout. In the late 1990s he restored the historic Selwyn Theatre to become the flagship home for Roundabout on Broadway, opening in 2000 with The Man Who Came To Dinner, starring Nathan Lane. Through the years, the Theatre has provided space for Roundabout’s extensive education programs and career training initiatives, and on stage has been home to Tony Award-winning and -nominated productions of Big River (2003), The Pajama Game (2006), On the Twentieth Century (2015), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2016), A Soldier’s Play (2020), and Trouble in Mind (2021).

The charge to honor Haimes through this renaming was led by Board members: Lawrence Kaplen (Vice Chair), Katheryn Patterson Kempner (Chair) and Thomas E. Tuft (First Vice Chair) through leadership gifts to the Todd Haimes Fund for Artistic Excellence.

As the leader of Roundabout Theatre Company for nearly 40 years, Todd Haimes transformed a company operating in a 150-seat space in a converted Chelsea basement into one of the leading cultural institutions in New York City and the largest not-for-profit theatre in America. It now has five Broadway and off- Broadway spaces for a rich repertory of both classics and world premieres; runs the most expansive education program of any theatre in the country highlighted by its Theatrical Workforce Development Program; and provides opportunities, support, and resources to artists at every stage of their careers.

Haimes ran the institution with a combination of business acumen and artistic leadership. In 1991, understanding the autonomy and potential a theatre company could enjoy operating its own venues, Haimes opened Roundabout’s first Broadway home at the Criterion Center at Broadway and 45th Street. Among the company’s early triumphs there were Anna Christie, starring Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, and New York’s first revival of She Loves Me, directed by Scott Ellis, both in 1993. All told, during Mr. Haimes’s tenure as Artistic Director/CEO, Roundabout’s shows have won 34 Tony Awards, 58 Drama Desk Awards, 73 Outer Critics Circle Awards, 21 Lucille Lortel Awards, and 14 Obie Awards.