“This obviously isn’t for money or glory, so come and do it if you want.”  Peter Sarsgaard typed that sentence in an email to an actor friend of his not long ago. “It” was the production of “Hamlet” that Classic Stage Company will present beginning in March, with Mr. Sarsgaard in the dual role of headliner and, apparently, behind-the-scenes casting agent. That show will follow this East Village theater’s mounting of Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country,” which begins previews Jan. 9 with Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling. And after his “Hamlet” winds down, the rest won’t be silence for long: Chris Noth of “Law & Order” and “The Good Wife” fame is coming in to play Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.  Classic Stage is hardly unique among theater companies in realizing that famous names sell tickets, but the number of well-known actors making the trip to this 199-seat space on East 13th Street is noteworthy. The previous three years have featured Elizabeth Olsen, Mandy Patinkin, John Turturro, F. Murray Abraham, Ethan Hawke and Dianne Wiest, among others, taking on the likes of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Brecht.  That list of playwrights goes a long way toward describing this Off Broadway theater’s success at securing such established talent. “These are the writers who will never let you down,” Ms. Schilling, best known as a star of the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” said during a recent lunch break at rehearsals for “A Month in the Country.”  Chekhov, in particular, has become a sort of Pied Piper for the company. “Frankly, I was tired of going to BAM and seeing English companies play Chekhov,” said Brian Kulick, who became Classic Stage’s artistic director in 2003. “There is an American tradition of doing these plays, and I thought we should be doing them.”  As it happened, Ms. Wiest had expressed interest in playing Arkadina in “The Seagull,” and Alan Cumming soon joined her for a 2008 production. Not long after that, Mr. Kulick staged a one-night reading of Tony Kushner’s new translation of Brecht’s “The Good Person of Szechwan.” Mr. Kushner told his leading lady, Maggie Gyllenhaal, at a post-show dinner that she would make a great Yelena in “Uncle Vanya, ” and it wasn’t long before she and her real-life husband, Mr. Sarsgaard, were starring in a Classic Stage production of the play.  Austin Pendleton directed that production, along with a subsequent “Ivanov” featuring Mr. Hawke. “There’s an unpretentiousness, an unassumingness about this theater where actors can say, ‘Let’s try this, I feel protected here,’ ” Mr. Pendleton says. “I don’t think people who come into C.S.C. ever feel used.”  Frequent one-night staged readings like “Szechwan” have been a reliable way for prominent actors to dip a toe into the theater’s waters. In fact, years before hitting it big with “Game of Thrones,” Mr. Dinklage played Uncle Vanya in a 2007 reading there directed by his wife, Erica Schmidt. The two ended up staging “Vanya” at Bard SummerScape in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where they first paired up with Ms. Schilling, their future “Month in the Country” co-star.  Mr. Kulick also gives a lot of credit to the physical space itself. “This is a theater that’s like a rehearsal room,” he said. “It’s not so big that you have to scream your performance but not so small that you have to say, ‘Excuse me, pardon me, audience, I need to go stage left.’ ”  Productions are typically staged with seats on three sides of the performers (“The audience is around you like a hand over someone’s mouth,” said Mr. Sarsgaard, who calls the space the best he’s ever worked in), though this configuration can and often does change. “It’s definitely a warm, welcome environment,” Mr. Dinklage said. (Some of the collegiality may stem from the fact that the Arkadina with two Academy Awards receives the same salary as the servant fresh out of acting school, according to the theater’s contract.)  All of this, along with the Important-with-a-capital-I texts and the friendly working atmosphere, gives Classic Stage the feel of a college black-box theater that just happens to feature movie and TV stars.  “We barely have enough electrical current to operate a space heater and a microwave oven at the same time without blowing a fuse,” Mr. Kulick said. “As a result, C.S.C. has never really been about spectacle but rather about performance.  “Some theaters are writers’ theaters,” he continued. “Others are directors’ theaters or theaters for experimentation. C.S.C. has, I would like to believe, become an actor’s theater.”  Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about playing the role of Masha in the Classic Stage Company's production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters."  James Calleri, who has spent more than 10 years overseeing the casting at the theater, is well aware that actors sell more tickets than writers, directors or experimenters. “It’s all part of that mix of art and commerce,” Mr. Calleri said. “How do we get people into a Chekhov play or a Molière play that they wouldn’t necessarily be flocking to?” (He also deserves credit for spotting the next generation of talent: Tucked in among these boldface names have been early performances by Adam Driver, David Oyelowo and Stark Sands along with Nina Arianda, whose role in Classic Stage’s “Venus in Fur” would eventually win her a Tony Award.)  Mr. Calleri has gotten assistance in recent years from his leading players. Just as Mr. Sarsgaard joined the Classic Stage troupe via Ms. Gyllenhaal, the actors’ positive experiences have spurred them to reach out to their friends and peers. This process became somewhat codified when Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Kulick solicited Mr. Sarsgaard’s input on casting decisions for “Hamlet.”  “Look, if someone’s going to put himself on the line and play Hamlet, that’s the least we can do,” Mr. Pendleton said.  While we may not be able to choose our parents in real life, Mr. Sarsgaard said early on that he wanted the longtime acting coach Penny Allen — “my mentor and a mentor to seemingly most of the great actors I know” — to play Gertrude to his Hamlet. And several other known commodities are likely to join them in the cast, which has yet to be announced. (No word yet on the recipient of that “money or glory” email, or on the response.)  Mr. Kulick said the company will also make an effort to mold its rehearsals and even performances around pre-existing commitments, something that used to be easier when network television held to a more predictable shooting schedule.  “These plays survive or fail by who’s at the center of them,” he said of the classics that give his theater its name and its reason for existing. “But one of the real joys of theater is continuity, and over time we’ve managed to create this sort of floating crap game of great actors.”  A version of this article appears in print on January 4, 2015, on page AR5 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Big Stars and Space Heaters Mix. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Why Classic Stage Company continues to draw big-name actors to perform in a 199-seat space in the East Village.