Broom Street Theater
experimental theater in Madison, Wisconsin
Broom Street Theater (also known as Broom Street or BST) is an experimental black box theater located in the heart of Madison's isthmus. As one of the oldest and most prolific experimental theater companies in the United States, it has produced over 350 original works. Productions are most frequently written and directed by local playwrights and artists, who are able to realize their vision without censorship of content or presentation. Broom Street Theater is a 501(c)(3) member-run non-profit which currently produces nine to ten plays per year.
History
Foundation and early years
Broom Street Theater was founded by Stuart Gordon in early 1969 in reaction to censorship attempts by the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Gordon's on-campus theater troupe, Screw Theater. The controversy surrounding nudity in the production of Peter Pan had received national attention in the fall of 1968. BST's first public performance, a reinterpretation of Lysistrata, occurred on May 9, 1969, after a several-months delay due to legal action by the Dane County District Attorney. Gordon left Broom Street after its first production, founding the Organic Theater Company, which moved to Chicago in 1970. Broom Street Theater has never performed on Broom Street, but takes its name from the location of its first rehearsal space, the third story of the Heeb warehouse, condemned and demolished by the City of Madison in 1969 to make way for a left-turn lane onto University Avenue.
After Lysistrata closed, Gordon ended his involvement with Broom Street, and a search was made for his replacement.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Broom Street Theater” as experimental theater in Madison, Wisconsin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as experimental theater in Madison, Wisconsin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14714414. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1968 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Broom Street Theater” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.