Gene Feist was born in Brooklyn to a beautician mother and bar-owner father, and grew up with a love of reading that made him a target of teasing when he was young, but also helped turn him into a playwright and co-founder of the Roundabout Theater Company, which is still a leading non-profit theatre company in Manhattan.
Gene Feist (January 16, 1923  March 17, 2014, New York City) was an American playwright, theater director and co-founder of the Roundabout Theater Company. Feist was born Eugene Feist in Brooklyn, the son of Hattie (Fishbein), a beautician, and Henry Feist, a bar owner and, later, a cab driver. Feist's love of reading made him a target of teasing during his youth. With his wife Kathe, known professionally as stage actress "Elizabeth Owens", he revived the New Theater in Nashville, Tennessee, and, in 1965, Gene and Kathe Feist founded the Roundabout Theatre Company, first located in the basement of a supermarket building owned by the housing development in Manhattan where the Feists lived. The Roundabout Theatre Company is a leading non-profit theatre company based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, affiliated with the League of Resident Theatres. The company was founded in 1965 by Gene Feist, Michael Fried and Elizabeth Owens and now operates five theatres, all in Manhattan: the American Airlines Theatre (for classic Broadway plays and musicals); Studio 54 (for Broadway musicals and special events); the Stephen Sondheim Theatre (a new theater that incorporates the original facade of the historical Henry Miller Theatre); the Off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre (for new works by established playwrights); and the Roundabout Underground Black Box Theatre (for new work of emerging writers and directors). 
