tr;bc NcurUork an C5 Gene Feist, Founder of the Roundabout TheaterCompany, Is Dead at 91 By BRUCE WEBER: MARCH 22, 2014 Gene Feist, who brought regular productions of classic theater to New York when he founded what is now the Roundabout Theater Company, a multistage Goliath that is one of the nation's most important nonprofit companies, died on Monday in Englewood, N.J. He was 91. The cause was complications of pneumonia, his daughter Gena said. Mr. Feist lived at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood and died at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Mr. Feist, a playwright and director who had worked in the burgeoning Off Off Broadway scene in the 1950s, was earning a living as a public school teacher when, with the help of his wife, an actress who performed as Elizabeth Owens, he started the Roundabout, one of the city's early nonprofit theater companies, in 1965. Carving out a 150-seat performance space in a basement under a supermarket in Chelsea (now home to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade) and drawing an audience with an inexpensive subscription offer (three plays for $5 — the first season had 400 subscribers), Mr. Feist assembled a schedule made up largely of revivals of classic plays from various eras. 1 age of 3 EFTA01195883