Playhouse theater seats plush with history

In a serendipity moment, Kipp Osborne planted the seeds for the Canal Park Playhouse, his now year-old theater nestled in the historic TriBeCa warehouse neighborhood two blocks from the Hudson River.

It was 10 years ago when Osborne, then a furniture designer and maker, stumbled onto a host of theater seats that were being sold from the defunct Sullivan Street Playhouse in the Village, where the "Fantasticks" were originally produced -- the longest-running show in New York City history.

"I saw the seats and I had to have them," said Osborne, who was a Broadway actor in the 1970s. "I bought all of them and brought them here," he said of the space that is now his theater.

"I covered them [the seats] up in tarp and stored them for 10 years. It was like a vision," Osborne said. "But then 9/11 happened and everything went south."

Osborne wasn't deterred, taking an economic risk and opening the playhouse in late 2010.

"I figured with the rents so low why not just open a theater and do something fun," he said, laughing as he sat in one of the salvaged velveteen theater seats.

He installed his seats and state-of-the-art lighting and sound to create the Canal Park Playhouse -- "a gentle place where quiet works from the heart can [be] heard through the clamor of the Big Apple," according to the theater's mission statement.

Building his theater in the spirit of Vaudeville and the city's subway performers, the playhouse is a cozy 55-seat theater that specializes in one- and two-character plays and offers a venue for circus performers in a cabaret setting.

Now, after almost a year of staging plays, a steady stream of young and old come to the theater, which offers audiences a friendly, more lively, intimate setting.

This month the playhouse is showing an original two-actor play, the "Perfect Catch."

The play is written and performed by Jen Slaw, 33, of Howard Beach, Queens, and Michael Karas, 26, of Bushwick, Brooklyn. The collaboration came while working together at Lincoln Center in the Little Orchestra -- a classical musical program for children and young adults.

"We are using juggling to tell a love story," said Karas. "The play is very visual and funny, especially for kids who get to see adults being silly," said Karas, who appeared Off-Broadway with The Flying Karamazov Brothers and teaches blind children circus skills.

Mother of two Toni de la Vega, 40, of Manhattan, said the play "kept my 8- and 10-year-olds captivated."

"The theater was quaint, charming -- a place I would definitely come back to with my family," she said.