About Stairwell
Since 2015, Stairwell Theater has crafted lush, immersive productions of classic texts in exciting site-specific environments. Through mainstage productions across the five boroughs of New York, national and international tours, and the development of new works, we strive to highlight the contemporary resonance of classic texts,
thrill diverse audiences, and liberate our collective imaginations.
Above all, we love to tell a good story.
Our Name
STAIRWELL THEATER is named for our first production, Titus Andronicus, which was performed in an outdoor stairwell. Directed by Founder & co-Artistic Director Sam Gibbs, the show played to raucous standing ovations at every performance.
This name represent our belief that transcendent theater can happen anywhere — from a stairwell, to a street corner, to a stage. This adventurous spirit guides all of our work, including the texts we select to perform and how we choose to bring them to life for audiences.
Our Values
STAIRWELL THEATER believes theatre should be memorable, transportive, and fun. We aim to be accessible, communal, and vividly experiential, using imagination to work with unexpected spaces and bring audiences to magical new worlds. We tell stories with ancient roots that help us understand who we are and who we can be.
We are educational in spirit, fostering artists to grow through the act of theatremaking and being in ensemble with one another while constantly seeking excellence.
Our History
STAIRWELL THEATER was born out of a simple but radical impulse: to make classical and scripted theater exciting again.
In 2015, after staging a site-specific production of Titus Andronicus in an old stairwell, Founder and co-Artistic Director Sam Gibbs decided to commit fully to creating theater in found spaces—warehouses, gyms, basements, boathouses, and anywhere else that sparks the imagination. Where traditional venues often came with limitations, found spaces offered freedom. Found spaces are now the defining feature of our work.
Over the past decage, Stairwell has staged performances in a repurposed warehouse, a riverbed, a boathouse, a Scottish basement, a gym, a punk rock music venue, a giant cage, and many more. We have engaged with writers including William Shakespeare, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, the Brothers Grimm, and others.