Soho Repertory Theatre

The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep, is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for producing avant-garde plays by contemporary writers. The company, described as a "cultural pillar", is currently located in a 65-seat theatre in the TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. The company, and the projects it has produced, have won multiple prizes and earned critical acclaim, including numerous Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. A recent highlight was winning the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement for "nearly four decades of artistic distinction, innovative production, and provocative play selection."

Notable artists who have recently created work at the theater, often early in their careers, include: David Adjmi, César Alvarez, Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Christopher Chen, Jackie Sibblies Drury, debbie tucker green, Aleshea Harris, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Daniel Alexander Jones, Young Jean Lee, Richard Maxwell, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Anne Washburn.

The New York Times has described it as a "safer home for dangerous plays". Critics note the “jaw dropping premieres” and “big plays in a small room” as defining features of the theater’s programming. New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als wrote about current director Sarah Benson:

Under her directorship I have never seen a boring production—a very rare thing, indeed. Her deeply individual sensibility is not compromised by needs other than those of the work at hand, and it’s that freedom, structured around shows that I may not agree with but always learn from, that distinguishes the SoHo Rep... Benson has imbued each work with a tough, unsentimental core; she’s also made the plays into distinct visual works that help us see the words.

In 2019 the company adopted a shared leadership model. The three Directors of the theater of the company Sarah Benson, Cynthia Flowers, and Meropi Peponides led the theater until Benson and Peponides' departure in 2023.

In 2023, Caleb Hammons and Eric Ting joined Cynthia Flowers as co-directors of the theater.

The company has an annual budget of around $2 million and employs a full-time staff of seven. In 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the company put eight artists on salary for the 2020-21 season through the creation of a job creation program titled Project Number One referencing Federal Project Number One.

The Soho Repertory Theatre company was founded in 1975 by Jerry Engelbach and Marlene Swartz. From June through September 1975, they remodeled a former textile factory in SoHo. They wanted the space to feel "light and informal" so the audience would feel comfortable. They produced their first play, Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo, on September 25. Their initial focus was on rarely seen classical plays, such as works by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Molière, Jean Anouilh, Michel de Ghelderode, Eugene O'Neill and Samuel Beckett. By 1979, the company was sometimes producing two shows per night, allowing audiences to see both plays in succession on a Saturday night. The founding duo produced more than a hundred plays until Engelbach left in 1989.