By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — Weak ticket sales and a growing operating deficit have forced the owner and artistic director of the historic Cherry Lane Theater to put the building up for sale, the New York Times reported.
Angelina Fiordellisi, who bought the theater at 38 Commerce Street in 1996 for $1.7 million, told the paper that the theater had a deficit of $250,000.
"I feel that we can no longer do theater for the sake of the art form," Fiordellisi said to the Times.
"We have to adhere to the formula of having a film star in our productions to sell tickets because it’s so financially prohibitive," she said.
Fiordellisi said she would step down as artistic director next year and that she was aiming to sell the space, which is a historic landmark, for $12 million.
Artists in poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's circle of friends founded the Cherry Lane in 1924. Over the years, the stage has served as a training ground for actors including Barbara Streisand and playwrights Sam Shepard and Samuel Beckett.
News of the theater's sale comes after the Children's Aid Society announcement last week that it would sell its Sullivan Street located Philip Coltoff Center in light of rising incomes in Greenwich Village so that they could serve areas with needier children.
