Lincoln Center Theater Board of Directors Kewsong Lee, Chair
David F. Solomon, President
Jonathan Z. Cohen, Jane Lisman Katz, Robert Pohly, John W. Rowe, and David Warren Vice Chairs
James-Keith Brown, Chair, Executive Committee
Marlene Hess, Treasurer
Brooke Garber Neidich, Secretary
André Bishop, Producing Artistic Director
Annette Tapert Allen
Allison M. Blinken
Judith Byrd
H. Rodgin Cohen
Ida Cole
Ide Dangoor
Shari Eberts
Curtland E. Fields
Chris Gallea
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Cathy Barancik Graham
David J. Greenwald
Anuj Gupta
J. Tomilson Hill, Chair Emeritus
Judith Hiltz
Sandra H. Hoffen
Linda LeRoy Janklow, Chair Emeritus
Raymond Joabar
Mitch Julis
Eric Kuhn
Betsy Kenny Lack
Phyllis Mailman
Ellen R. Marram
Scott M. Mills
Eric M. Mindich, Chair Emeritus
John Morning
Elyse Newhouse
Rusty O’Kelley
Andrew J. Peck
Michael Roberts
Bruce Rosenblum
Stephanie Shuman
Laura Speyer
Maria Tash
Electra Toub
Leonard Tow, Vice Chair Emeritus
Tracey T. Travis
Kara Unterberg
Stellene Vollandes
William D. Zabel, Vice Chair Emeritus
John B. Beinecke, Chair Emeritus
Constance L. Clapp, Ellen Katz, Memrie M. Lewis, Augustus K. Oliver, Victor H. Palmieri, Elihu Rose, and Daryl Roth, Honorary Trustees
Hon. John V. Lindsay, Founding Chair Bernard Gersten, Founding Executive Producer
The Rosenthal Family Foundation— Jamie Rosenthal Wolf, Rick Rosenthal and Nancy Stephens, Directors is the Lincoln Center Theater Review’s founding and sustaining donor.
Our deepest appreciation for the support provided to the Lincoln Center Theater Review by the Christopher Lightfoot Walker Literary Fund at the Lincoln Center Theater.
Photographs on pages I-III and 76-79: Jenny Anderson, Chasi Annexy, Erin Baiano, Julieta Cervantes, Jeremy Daniel, T. Charles Erickson,
Marc J. Franklin, Kyle Froman, Paul Kolnik, Brigitte Lacombe, Rebecca Leshin, and Joan Marcus.
Lincoln Center Theater, a not-for-profit organization. All rights reserved.
A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR JENNA CLARK EMBREY
22 WITNESSING HISTORY LEAH MADDRIE
26 FROM THE ARCHIVES THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN OF NEW YORK THEATER JACK O’BRIEN
30 A SINGULAR SPACE BARTLETT SHER
32 THE ART WON TED CHAPIN
34 FROM THE ARCHIVES THEN AND NOW ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE
38 WITHIN THESE WALLS LYNN AHRENS & STEPHEN FLAHERTY
39 SET AND RESET BEOWULF BORITT
48 LESSONS FROM MR. BISHOP SARAH RUHL
50
POSTER CHILD THE ART OF JAMES McMULLAN
52 A LITTLE THEATER IN THE SKY THE OPENING OF LCT3
40 FROM THE ARCHIVES LAUGHTER IN THE HOUSE BERNARD GERSTEN
OPENING NUMBER FOR OPENING A THEATER
LYNN AHRENS & STEPHEN FLAHERTY
FROM THE ARCHIVES A MARVELOUS COMPROMISE HUGH HARDY
68 SOME ENCHANTED EVENINGS LCT STAFF
A MAN OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TWELVE TOASTS FOR ANDRÉ
78 AN IDEAL COMPANION JOHN GUARE
80 A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY LCT IN THE SCHOOLS KATI KOERNER
SECRET LIFE OF PLAYWRIGHTS TOM STOPPARD
84
TRUSTING THE PROCESS J. T. ROGERS
EXIT A HUMBLE MAN ANDRÉ BISHOP IN CONVERSATION WITH JENNA CLARK EMBREY
A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Forty years. Forty years! How does one summarize four decades of a theater’s history? The simple answer is, you don’t. Not in a 96-page magazine, anyway. The forty-year legacy of Lincoln Center Theater could fill an entire book series, each volume being the weight of a doorstopper. The contents of this special issue of the Lincoln Center Review are a mere fraction of the stories that could be told.
When an institution celebrates a major anniversary, there is always pressure to talk about the future. Looking back at the past is too easy, we say, we have to turn our gaze forward (“New forms! New forms!” as Chekhov’s Konstantin would proclaim). But our past is our root system; it’s our DNA. And the future is in there too, if you know where to dig.
While collecting stories for this issue from writers, directors, staff, and actors, common threads started to emerge. You’ll see bits of the same anecdotes crop up in multiple essays, Rashomon-style. The history of Lincoln Center Theater is a shared one, often passed down from staff member to staff member; this is a theater, after all—we are in the business of telling stories. And sometimes that story is our own. An everpresent reminder of the LCT story is there for anyone who has ever had the chance to see behind the scenes: the hallways of our administrative offices and backstage areas are lined with the posters of shows past. These posters serve as a kind of navigational signage for getting around the underground labyrinth of the theater (to reach the main office area, take the door next to Anything Goes. To get into the Beaumont via backstage, open the door across from The Nance). But these posters also serve as a touchstone for our mission: we help make theater happen. If advertising giant BBDO hadn’t beaten us to it, Lincoln Center Theater’s slogan could have very well been “The Work. The Work. The Work.”
In this edition of the Review, you’ll read about the winding path that goes from the Repertory
Theater of Lincoln Center to the Vivian Beaumont to the Lincoln Center Theater we know today. We’ve reached back into our archives to reprint a series of essays detailing the design, construction, and early years of the theater. As you’ll read, this venue was once thought to be an impossible space in which to make theater. In the 1970s and 80s, The New York Times devoted dozens of columns to dissecting the challenging architecture and finances of the Beaumont (according to my research, none of these columns were titled “How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Beaumont?,” which seems like a missed opportunity). But underlying this collective anxiety was, of course, a deep belief in the value of theater and the importance of creating it here at Lincoln Center— making a statement that plays and musicals belong on the same campus as such vital cultural institutions as the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet.
As distinctive as the architecture of Lincoln Center Theater is, it is a building that is defined best by the people that fill it. There are the engineering crews that watch the building at night, the cleaners that start their shifts in the early morning, the backstage crew and stage managers and actors and designers and on and on . . .ours is not an art form made in solitude. In reading this issue, you’ll learn about the inner workings of LCT from the likes of Resident Director Bartlett Sher, Mindich Chair Musical Theater Associate Producer Ira Weitzman, playwright Sarah Ruhl, director Jack O’Brien, and so many more. And you’ll hear several people mention the late, great Bernard Gersten—Lincoln Center Theater’s Executive Producer from 1985 to 2013—a singular force who helped to define LCT in a singular way. So that you can experience Bernie’s voice firsthand, we’ve reprinted an essay of his, “Laughter in the House.” I promise you that after reading it, the next time you walk into a full theater, you will think of theatrons and Bernie Gersten.
Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live . . . we interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely . . . by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” When we sit in a theater, we assemble a tale to help us make sense of the world. And even if that story is generally agreed upon by audiences, our own experience—moment to moment—is as personal as fingerprints. In this issue, you’ll read recollections of Lincoln Center Theater productions from some of those who know them best: the LCT staff. For some, transformative moments came from productions that were seen dozens of times while on staff, but for others, the lightning struck years before they came to work at Lincoln Center Theater. There is a special kind of magic to watching a show and feeling that this production will be a part of your life in some unknowable, future way. It’s a magic that’s not unfamiliar to me: when I was a teenager, I took the train from Pennsylvania to catch a matinee of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, directed by Jack O’Brien. As I left the theater, bowled over by what I had just seen on stage, I took a copy of the 28th issue of the Lincoln Center Theater Review. That copy has traveled with me through multiple states and apartments, and it now sits inches away from me in my office at LCT, as I edit this 81st issue of the Review. Time is a flat circle.
There is one shift that comes at the close of our 40th Anniversary Season that hovers over everything: the departure of André Bishop, Lincoln Center Theater’s Artistic Director since the early 1990s. Many pages in this issue are filled with words of love, praise, and gratitude from his countless friends and colleagues. There are themes to these stories: everyone remembers the first time André called them (two of our contributors used the word “sonorous” to describe his voice), and everyone remembers when André offered a
word of support or advice when they needed it most. Shortly after André came to LCT, there was a feature on him in The New York Times with the title “Enter a Humble Man.” And while André is universally described as unfailingly kind, he gives another description of himself in this Times piece: “I work like a dog, and I can fix Act Two.” It should not be taken for granted that one of the nicest leaders is also one of the greatest minds of the American theater. To witness André Bishop talk about theater is truly watching a master at work. A DaVinci of dramatic structure. To know André Bishop is to learn from him, to be in awe of him, and to love him. I hope that readers of this issue of the Review, if they don’t have the great blessing of knowing André personally, will walk away with a sense of what an incredible impact this man has had on the lives of so many. He is the definition of irreplaceable.
Legal scholar Roscoe Pound stated, “the law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still.” I think this perspective could be applied to nonprofit theater as well. There is a reliability we must maintain—our audiences need to know where we are, and who we are. But we must also find ways to evolve, to grow with the world and not just alongside it. I’ve always thought of Lincoln Center Theater as the theater of big ideas. Sometimes those big ideas are the Oslo Accords, and sometimes they are high school sports championships (and maybe those two things have more in common than we might initially assume). The thread that runs through the plays and musicals at LCT is that the characters that populate our stages are fighting for the things that mean the most to them. As audience members, we bear witness to these quests for justice and freedom and love. And, to quote Tony Kushner, “the world only spins forward”—and so does our theater. Our big ideas never stand still.
When Lincoln Center Theater was founded forty years ago, “We Are the World” was recorded, Microsoft Windows 1.0 had just debuted, Michael
Jordan was a rookie in the NBA, and Motorola released the first mobile phone. What will the next four decades bring? The young people who come to visit the theater today—perhaps with their parents or grandparents, or as audience members at student matinees—will be the theater leaders of tomorrow. They will be the Tony Award-winning directors and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights and the actors who make you weep and laugh and think. In 2064, the Lincoln Center Theater Review might publish a special edition to celebrate 80 years of LCT, and that issue will feature photos from iconic, beloved productions that, as of right now, have yet to be written. There is so much in our past to love, and so much in our future to look forward to.
The gemstone associated with fortieth anniversaries is the ruby, symbolizing passion, devotion, and eternal love. It feels quite fitting for the celebration of Lincoln Center Theater, with the Beaumont’s sea of deep-red seats. Let’s raise a glass to the forty years of Lincoln Center Theater, and step forward into the next forty.
Cheers,
Jenna Clark Embrey
WEITZMAN
WELC ME H ME
WHEN YOU FIRST ENTER the Lincoln Center Theater stage door and pass through the narrow hallway of crowded administrative offices, you might not realize how much activity is going on two floors beneath the ground level and on the roof above the main building structure. There are the three theater spaces: the 1,080-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, its smaller sister the 299-seat Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, and above it all is the relatively new 112-seat Claire Tow Theater, home of LCT3, which opened in 2012. Though this season celebrates LCT’s 40th anniversary in its current incarnation, the building itself, designed by the eminent architectural innovator Eero Saarinen and the legendary theater designer Jo Mielziner, opened in 1965. The Beaumont and Newhouse are both three quarter thrust configurations, i.e. stages surrounded on three sides by the audience. Thrust theaters go back to the 16th century, predating the now much more popular proscenium
where the audience sits directly in front of the stage. In the 1960’s during the rise of the American regional theater movement, thrust stages were all the rage, such as Minneapolis’s famed Guthrie Theater, which was built in 1963. The Beaumont was meant to be a flexible space that could convert from thrust to proscenium with the help of a hydraulic lift that raised and lowered part of the orchestra section of seats whenever desired. Turns out, that idea was ill-conceived and never worked satisfactorily. The actual hydraulic mechanism sat dormant for decades until it was removed in the early 1990’s, replaced by a much-needed orchestra pit. The thrust stage is not a popular configuration in America, particularly in NYC where you can count the number of such theaters on one hand. For years, at the beginning of the history of our building, the Beaumont and Newhouse (first called the Forum) were considered unworkable, and indeed, using the thrust stage effectively can be difficult to say the least; but more about that in a bit.
In the two floors below ground in the LCT building are dressing rooms, offices for artistic and production staffs, shops for prop building and wardrobe, storage space, green rooms with kitchens, and rehearsal studios, not to mention the mechanics for operating the building in the sub-subbasement. All the walls are lined with the original poster art from each play or musical produced here. On top of the building, the Tow Theater level encompasses even more facilities mimicking those below
IRA
ground. When I first came to work at LCT in 1992, it took me weeks to figure out how to maneuver around the labyrinth of floors, but once I did, I was struck by the miraculous idea that the entire creation of a play or musical could happen within the confines of this building. Meetings, readings, and workshops are held downstairs or upstairs, auditions in the specially designated Shiki Room (named in honor of a generous contribution from the world-renowned Japanese Theatre Company) and rehearsals in the appropriately labeled Large and Small Rehearsal Rooms. There is also a medium-sized rehearsal studio, as legend goes dubbed by Jerome Robbins as the Ballet Room when he was rehearsing an experimental theater project here in the early days. The only things that must be done offsite are the construction of the sets and costumes. Each of the essential activities for almost all plays and musicals produced in NYC, particularly on Broadway, happens in various places, with only the final production in the theater building itself. The wonder of being selfcontained has inspired a vast community of writers, directors, actors, designers, technicians, ushers, and administrators to feel that LCT is an artistic home.
The ease and comfort of an all-encompassing building is contrasted by the physical challenges of staging a play or musical in the Beaumont and Newhouse Theaters. Thrusts require a completely different set of staging techniques than those used directing in a proscenium set up. Directors and choreographers know (or quickly realize) that wherever an actor stands on the thrust their back will be to someone in the audience. Constant movement of the cast is necessary to share everything with the whole audience. Counterintuitively, the “power position” in the center of the proscenium stage is probably the weakest place on the thrust. The sweet spot is usually in the corner of the stage in front of the voms (aka vomitoria: entrance or exit passageways derived from Roman amphitheaters) where everyone can see the actor’s face. Performers standing in straight lines are almost never a good idea, but diagonals are our friends. Because the audience seating is steeply raked looking down at the playing area, directors and designers must also pay close attention to the stage floor which is always in view. Veteran directors such as Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, Oslo, Intimate Apparel) who trained at America’s original thrust stage theater, The Guthrie, and Graciela Daniele (Marie Christine, A New Brain, The Glorious Ones,
TO ME, THE BEST THING ABOUT THE BEAUMONT, NEWHOUSE, AND TOW THEATERS IS . . . YOU FEEL EMBRACED BY THE ACTION SINCE ALL THE SEATS ARE NEAR THE STAGE.
The Gardens of Anuncia) have mastered the tricks of the thrust. Other notable directors have conquered these spaces over the years including Jerry Zaks (Anything Goes, Six Degrees of Separation), Jack O’Brien (The Coast of Utopia), Susan Stroman (Contact), and Lileana Blain-Cruz (The Skin of Our Teeth, Flex) among many more. Of course, there is the occasional production that succumbs to the pitfalls of the thrust leaving some of the audience frustrated, but those shows are, thankfully, in the minority.
To me, the best thing about the Beaumont, Newhouse, and Tow Theaters is the intimacy of seeing a play or musical here. You feel embraced by the action since all the seats are near the stage. As a teenager in junior high school during the first incarnation of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, I used to impersonate a high school student to procure “rush tickets” at a reduced cost. I would sit way off to the side of the Beaumont Theater in the really cheap seats. During a performance of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, I had a premonition that someday I would work in this building! My proximity to the stage moved me. I felt the thrill of immersion in the theatrical experience, and it awakened what would become my lifelong passion for making live theater. Fortunately for me, my premonition came true. I owe it all to the stages here at Lincoln Center Theater, my artistic home. ▪
Lincoln Center Plaza North, May 22, 1970.
6 Dreams
We all need to know where we come from, and in this regard, theaters are no different than people. The history of what we now know as Lincoln Center Theater is one of the more colorful tales among artistic institutions. If looking at the glass as half-empty, one might describe the early administrations of Lincoln Center Theater as false starts, but as HELEN SHEEHY so incisively describes in this 2010 essay, the first few decades were crucial building blocks—as Antonio says in Shakespeare’s The Tempest , “What’s past is prologue.”
Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead, looking at the construction of the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 19601965. Courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
N 1958, VIVIAN BEAUMONT ALLEN gave $3 million to Lincoln Center, hoping to build a national theater “comparable in distinction and achievement to the Comédie-Francaise.” To dream the new theater into existence, a theater that would stand on equal terms with the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet, the Lincoln Center Board looked a few blocks south and chose two distinguished and respected Broadway veterans, the director Elia Kazan and the producer Robert Whitehead.
Elia Kazan, then fifty-one, who compared himself to a black snake because he’d shed his skin so many times, had co-founded the Group Theatre and the Actors Studio, and on Broadway had directed the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Robert Whitehead, handsome and dapper, with a mustache that made him look like a riverboat gambler according to Tennessee Williams, was admired for the artistic merit of his commercial productions, including
Medea, starring Judith Anderson and John Gielgud, and Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding, introducing Julie Harris and the blues singer Ethel Waters.
The team of Kazan and Whitehead wanted, they said, “to make the theater necessary again as the great theaters in eras past were necessary.” They planned to bring together the best theater artists in the country and “make art, not business.” Whitehead warned, “It may take a lifetime.” The news was greeted with hyperbolic praise and anticipation. After all, the theater at Lincoln Center would be the first new theater built in New York since the Ethel Barrymore in 1928, and the first attempt to create a new repertory company since Eva Le Galliene’s Civic Repertory Theatre, which flourished from 1926 until it closed seven years later during the Depression. The New York Times proclaimed, “This is the first seismic tremor in what may prove to be a great earthquake in the American theater.”
The opening of the theater (in a temporary structure downtown, because the Vivian Beaumont Theater was still just a huge hole in the ground) in January 1964 was a cataclysm, quickly followed by chaos and devastation. For the inaugural production, Kazan directed Arthur Miller’s memory play, After the Fall, with characters based on the playwright, Marilyn Monroe (although Miller denied it), and an informer modeled on Kazan. The critical reception was merciless and vitriolic, although audiences, lured by voyeurism and the combined star power of everyone involved, sent ticket sales soaring.
After one season in the temporary theater, which included productions of Miller’s Incident at Vichy and The Changeling, Kazan’s attempt at directing Jacobean tragedy, the impatient board, prodded by a hostile press, forced the men to leave. Although Whitehead continued to produce serious theater on Broadway, Kazan never staged another play. “I was not the man to solve this problem,” he said.
If Kazan couldn’t solve the problem, who could? Never mind that it had taken England more than a century to create its national theater— the board members wanted immediate results, so they searched for new dreamers. This time they traveled three thousand miles west and found perhaps the unlikeliest candidates in American theater—Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, co-founders of the Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco.
Blau, a former professor, had just published The Impossible Theater, A Manifesto. A theater revolutionary, Blau wrote, “There are times when, confronted with the despicable behavior of people in the American theater, I feel like the lunatic Lear on the heath, wanting to kill, kill, kill. . . .” At the Actor’s Workshop, Blau and Irving had directed and produced more new American plays than any other regional theater and introduced their audiences to avant-garde drama, including Bertolt Brecht, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter.
In 1957, they presented Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at San Quentin State Prison. “I don’t want to be doing Mary, Mary when the bomb drops,” Irving said.
When they moved to Lincoln Center, bringing many members of their company with them, Blau and Irving promised that “ideologically we shall remain . . . three thousand miles from Broadway and what it represents.” Once again, there was great fanfare in the press, and enormous excitement. Regional-theater historian Joseph Ziegler observed that Blau and Irving’s move to New York was a “major turning point of the regionaltheater revolution because it marked the first time that the central powers turned to the periphery for help.”
“I wasn’t long at Lincoln Center,” Blau wrote later, “before I felt rather like Captain Ahab on the third day of the hunt.” After one season of classical plays and an inability to surmount the technical and acoustical problems of the white whale of the Beaumont stage, Blau left.
Jules Irving, a charming former actor and a self-taught financial wizard, stayed on for six more years, and achieved many successes on the small jewel of the Forum Theater’s stage with productions of Pinter, Beckett, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. When the Forum’s season was canceled because of insufficient funds, Irving resigned in protest. “Our dramatic heritage is being strangled by indifference,” he said.
Into the vacuum stepped Joseph Papp, then fifty-two, the self-made son of a Polish immigrant and a man who dominated New York theater, moving easily between a summer season of Shakespeare in Central Park and his Public Theater downtown, which housed four theaters, as well as productions on Broadway and television. With Bernard Gersten, his brilliant producing partner, Papp was successful both in the institutional, nonprofit world and in the commercial theater. The board wooed him, and the marriage settlement included a change of name. The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center would now be called the New York Shakespeare Festival at Lincoln Center. “If Papp did not exist,” Mel Gussow wrote, “some playwright would have to invent him.”
During his first two seasons, Papp brought new playwrights like David Rabe and Miguel Piñero to the Beaumont’s stage. Almost all of the plays he produced were controversial, filled with sex and violence; this enraged the theater subscribers, whom Papp privately referred to as “the Viennese.”
The following season, Papp changed his policy and produced a season of classics, which inspired another wave of protest that he had shed his principles. In an effort to “create a bridge between the avantgarde theater and the conventional theater,” Papp mated experimental directors with classics, producing Richard Foreman’s version of The Threepenny Opera and Andréi Serban’s production of The Cherry Orchard. Suddenly, just as audiences were begin-
ning to respond to his experiments, Papp resigned, saying that he felt “trapped in an institutional structure both artistically and fiscally.”
During Papp’s first season, the writer Patricia Bosworth followed him around for days. In all that time she wrote, “I never saw anyone cross Papp publicly—except one . . . very fragile-looking woman.” It was at the ceremony renaming the Forum the Mitzi E. Newhouse. “Papp sprawled on the stage,” Bosworth wrote, “puffing on a huge cigar. Mrs. Newhouse attempted to speak but seemed to be fighting for breath. Pausing, she waved her tiny, jeweled hands in the air and cried: ‘Joe, please? No cigar smoke in my theater.’ Papp quickly stubbed out his cigar.”
To replace the colorful outsized Papp, the board chose Richmond Crinkley, an amiable Southerner, who had served as director of programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library and also as Roger Stevens’ assistant at the Kennedy Center. In 1979 just after he took the Lincoln Center position, Crinkley moved his production of The Elephant Man to Broadway, where it won a Tony for Best Play.
Crinkley’s dream for the theater at Lincoln Center emphasized “our American and English-language artistic heritage.” He named a fivemember directorate, made up of Woody Allen, Sarah Caldwell, Liviu Ciulei, Robin Phillips, and Ellis Rabb to help him run the theater. In 1980-81, he produced a three-play season of Raab’s The Philadelphia Story; Allen’s The Floating Light Bulb, directed by Ulu Grosbard; and Sarah Caldwell’s Macbeth. None of the productions were successful, either critically or at the box office. The theater remained closed, while Crinkley and the board pondered changing the Beaumont into a proscenium theater. The proposal made sense to Crinkley, since most American classic plays had been written for the proscenium, and to save money he wanted to share productions with the Kennedy Center, which had a proscenium stage. When the
(Above) Herbert Blau and Jules Irving. Photograph courtesy of LCT.
board lost a $4 million foundation grant to rebuild the Beaumont with a proscenium arch, Walter Kerr pointed out that “proscenium stages don’t establish brilliant acting companies, they don’t go out and find talented directors, and they don’t, of course, write plays. They just stand there.”
It took Peter Brook’s luminous staging of Carmen (as well as a subtle reconfiguring of the space that had been intermittently shuttered since 1977) in 1984 to prove that the Beaumont could work. Thirty-fouryear-old Gregory Mosher, the artistic director of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, saw that production and realized that Brook had found the theater’s “sweet spot.” In July 1985, a reorganized board, led by former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, gave Gregory Mosher and Bernard Gersten, as executive producer, the challenge of relighting a theater that had been dark for most of the last eight years.
The year before, Mosher had directed David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway and was no stranger to New York theater. Still, he came to his new job with some apprehension, packing only two suitcases, not expecting to stay long. Almost immediately, he made significant changes. Lincoln Center Theater Company became Lincoln Center Theater. He’d realized from Papp’s tenure that Papp had been boxed in by the subscription season. “Subscription is the only system where you close your hits and run your flops,” Mosher said, and he inaugurated a membership system instead. “Good Plays, Popular Prices” became the theater’s motto. And, while previous artistic directors talked endlessly to the press about their plans, Mosher refused to discuss his vision. “What are you about?” reporters would ask, and he said, “Come to the plays and then you tell me.” Almost every day for six years, Mosher said to the staff, “We are not our press releases, our reviews, our balance sheets, our interviews, our annual reports, or our awards. We are what happens at 8.”
The theater’s first big hit was John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, which began at the Newhouse and moved upstairs to the Beaumont. More hits followed, including Anything Goes, Sarafina!, Mamet’s Speed-thePlow with Madonna on Broadway, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with Spalding Gray as the Stage Manager, Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, and a number of other new and old plays, some of which were flops.
In 1991, Mosher quit. “I was very tired,” he recalled. “I had taken two, two-week vacations between 1974 and 1991.” He’s modest about the success that eluded, he believed, much greater directors. “Everybody had been trying to get the lid off the pickle jar for years,” he said, “and the guy who finally does it doesn’t deserve the credit.”
For the sixth time, the theater needed a dreamer. “We knew we had to find someone very special,” said board member Linda LeRoy Janklow. Bernard Gersten put together a list that included André Bishop, the artistic director of Playwrights Horizons, a small Off-Broadway theater devoted to new American works and as different from Lincoln Center Theater as could be.
A shy, scholarly man with a selfeffacing manner that masks a formidable will, Bishop at the time was the golden boy of the New York nonprofit theater, having put a distinct stamp on the work of Playwrights Horizons and, in the process, produced a number of extraordinarily successful new shows, including three Pulitzer Prize winners: The Heidi Chronicles, Driving Miss Daisy, and Sunday in the Park with George “Leaving Playwrights Horizons was like leaving my youth behind,” Bishop recalled. “Lincoln Center Theater was everything I knew nothing about—it was big, it was uptown, it was a marble palace with two difficult thrust stages. Yet I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing new plays in a very small theater, albeit a theater I loved with all my heart. I think I had unconsciously been
looking for a bigger canvas. I wanted to do Shakespeare and the classics and large-scale musical work. I also knew that if I didn’t take the opportunity another one might never come along again.”
Knowing that he was nervous about the change, the director Gerald Gutierrez, a friend of Bishop’s counseled him. “Darling, don’t worry about a thing. Just pretend you’ve come into an inheritance and you’re moving uptown into a very large and splendid apartment.” Bishop took his advice and the advice of another friend, Wendy Wasserstein (“Do it, André—you have to do it”), and came to Lincoln Center Theater with happiness and great trepidation. He need not have worried.
For eighteen years, things have worked out for André Bishop. But despite success with a number of new plays and musicals, including The Sisters Rosensweig and Contact, to name two, Bishop feels that he has not been as effective in the new work arena as he should have been, given his background at Playwrights Horizons. “We need to produce more new plays and spend more time working with younger generations of directors. This is why we have started a new program—LCT3—that will exclusively produce the work of new playwrights with new directors and designers and a very low ticket price. We hope to build this third theater, to be named the Claire Tow Theater after the wife of one of our board members, on the roof of the Beaumont. Meanwhile, to get things started, we are renting outside space,” he says. Ironically, his greatest achievement has been the very thing he had no knowledge or experience of when he arrived at Lincoln Center: the constant and effective use of the Beaumont Theater. With the help of a group of first-rate directors and designers who weren’t afraid of the space—in fact, they reveled in it—and a major renovation that solved the acoustic and seating problems, LCT, under Bishop’s direction, presented many
extraordinary productions in the Beaumont—including Carousel, The Coast of Utopia, Henry IV, and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific—to popular and critical acclaim.
Years earlier, in their first subscription brochure, Blau and Irving dreamed of a theater at Lincoln Center that would be a “crossroads, a meeting hall, a shrine, a playground, and a battleground . . . a place of wonder and confrontation where the prophetic soul of the world, in an age of revolutions, may do its dreaming on things to come.” Bishop says, “Well, those were fancy words, but I’m not sure what they mean. I believe in dreaming in private and then letting people come and see the results. I don’t know what the future will bring,” he adds, but he continues to dream. ▪
FROM THE TROUBLED BEAUM NT TO LINCOLN CENTER THEATER
GREGORY MOSHER SERVED as the director of Lincoln Center Theater from 1985-1991. Mosher was 36-years-old when he took the job, straight off of seven seasons running the Goodman Theater in Chicago, during which his focus on producing galvanizing new works brought the theater national acclaim. When he came on board, the Vivian Beaumont Theater had only produced two shows in the past five years, had virtually no operating capital, had no community of artists, and was seen as a troubled behemoth that confounded some of the greatest theater minds of the 20th Century,
including Elia Kazan and Joe Papp. His innovative programming choices combined with his revolutionary ideas around affordable ticketing and accessible membership changed the trajectory of the theater forever, building the foundation for what Lincoln Center Theater is today. Christine Scarfuto sat down with him recently to talk about his time as director of Lincoln Center Theater.
CHRISTINE SCARFUTO: When you came to the Beaumont, the theater seemed like an unsolvable problem. Why had there been so many struggles with the Beaumont in particular?
GREGORY MOSHER: In the early ‘60s, the Ford Foundation began getting involved in the arts, which was followed by the creation of the National Endowment of the Arts. There were fewer than ten not-for-profit theaters in America in
1960, so this whole idea of a nonprofit theater was new and interesting. The theater part was an afterthought even architecturally in terms of planning the complex at Lincoln Center, tucked in the corner there. The symphony was brought on board, the Met Opera was brought on board, and Balanchine brought his company on board. Nobody really knew what a not-for-profit theater was in 1964—they were inventing it, and some people thought it should be modeled after the National Theatre or the Comédie-Française, and that was kind of the dominant view and influenced the way the space was used. It’s a funny space. I remember seeing The Philadelphia Story there, I think I must have been a student or maybe I just started in Chicago. And people would say goodbye, ending some witty Phillip Barry scene, and then would have to walk literally 30 feet to get to the door. But for many years, nobody could figure it out, and a lot of people thought it was doomed. There was serious talk about giving it to the Film Society, which was fairly new at that point, and turning it into a series of screening rooms. Then Peter Brook did Carmen in 1983, and that worked because they didn’t try to use
AN INTERVIEW WITH GREGORY MOSHER BY CHRISTINE SCARFUTO
the whole space. Brook, along with designer Jean-Guy Lecat, reconfigured the theater in a way that it felt as intimate as the Mitzi, and that showed everybody that the theater could work. But when I arrived in ‘85, there was still a lot of argument about whether it should be converted into a proscenium theater, as if New York needed another 1000-seat proscenium theater. But it was Brook who solved it. And when I finally took the job, about the first thing I did was call Peter and say, “Excuse me, could you explain how you did that?” And he said,“Come to Paris and I will show you.” And I got on a plane and went to Paris, and he and Jean-Guy showed me all the plans. It was very simple what he did. CS: How did you come to Lincoln Center? GM: In 1984, an intermediary very quietly approached me and said, I think the Beaumont people want to talk to you. This was presumably because the Goodman was doing okay, and we had both Glengarry and Hurlyburly playing in New York. At first I thought it was a joke, but we had a little chat. And then like nine months later, most of which I spent saying there’s no way I will do this job, I accepted. Sometime that fall we started having serious talks, and over Christmas, I wrote up a plan emphasizing new work and affordable tickets and shared it with Board Chair John Lindsay and others. By then I had decided to leave the Goodman, but I was thinking of doing lots of different things, including starting another theater in Chicago.
Remember, at this time the company had no money. People were telling me to stay in Chicago, that the Beaumont was a deathtrap. But my question wasn’t “Chicago or the Beaumont?” It was “What’s next?” At some point that winter, I started coming in every Monday, which was the Goodman’s day off, and talking to board members and Lindsay. Sometime in there, I said I would do it if they agreed to let me be the director of the theater—no play selection committees, stuff like that. I could set a direction and it would work or it wouldn’t. Well, they did agree to that, and in April ‘85 I accepted and it was announced. A few weeks later, I reached out to Bernie, and we agreed to have lunch. I was smart enough to bring Mike Nichols to the lunch. We’re at the Ginger Man, of course. When Bernie approached, Mike got up and extended his hand and said, “Well, the thought of you being involved in this is the best news I’ve heard so far!” This really charmed Bernie. We then what he called “dated” for three months—we talked about what the theater should be—and in June ’85, he came on board.
CS: What was your first play?
GM: It was the summer and fall of ‘85. John, Bernie, and other board members and I were having endless discussions about how to start because we didn’t have enough money to do a season, and we couldn’t raise any money until we started doing plays. The thing to remember about that time is that there was no money—we had $600K, which might as well be no money. We had one person on staff to open the doors, no paper clips, no computers, no stationery, and the place was a physical mess. And one night over Chinese food, in my memory it was like 1:30 in the morning at John’s apartment, somebody—and it was probably Bernie—said, “Well, we’ve got to start somehow, let’s just do a play. Forget announcing a season. Let’s do a
play.” I loved that idea. And in 1985, it made sense to do a play of David Mamet’s. So our first show was two one acts by Mamet, Prairie Du Chein and The Shawl, which I directed. We had an amazing cast including Bill Macy, Mike Nussbaum, and Jerry Stiller, and they were wonderful. And everybody hated it. The critic John Simon said, “Well, we’ve heard of ending with not a bang, but a whimper. Who would have thought somebody would start not with a bang, but a whimper?” It was brutal. I called John the next morning and said, “If you want me to resign, I’ll resign, this must have been very embarrassing for you.” And he knew I was serious. And he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. What’s the next show?”
CS: Do you have a show that you’re most proud of?
GM: I think the least likely things. There were a couple things that were very unlikely that any other theater would or could do. One was Serafina by Mbongeni Ngema, which was amazing. Another was when I got a script package from Skip Gates, and it turned out to be the draft of Mule Bone by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. It had never premiered. Skip put a Post-it note on it saying, “Just do this play. Skip.” So we had a reading, and had a conversation in the rehearsal room after asking, “Should we do this play?” And we did it, and that was amazing. It played at the Barrymore because the Beaumont was tied up, and we extended it and it played at like 90% of capacity. It was 35 of the best actors in New York up on that stage. Who else was going to do that? You weren’t going to do it as a commercial production, and very few not-for-profits have the resources to do a play like that. I’m also proud of the fact that we opened the Beaumont after all those years of darkness with the Flying Karamazov Brothers on April Fool’s Day. That was fun. You know, I think people were kind of expecting King Lear with the original cast. And instead, they had four jugglers. It sold out. It was incredible, it was joyous. I’m proud of the things that we did that other people would not have been able to do, because it meant that
we were using our resources well—we used our resources to support artists. That’s what I’m proud of.
CS: How has Lincoln Center Theater impacted the theater landscape?
GM: We were a writer-centric theater, and that’s because I was always inspired by The Court. The one thing I always thought would have an impact is that we decided not to take a cut of the writers’ future royalties. I remember saying to Bernie, “Well, we don’t take a cut of Patti LuPone’s salary, we don’t take a cut of Kevin Kline’s, why would we take a cut from the writer? A writer usually only has three or four successful plays in their lifetime, why are we taking a percentage of that? It’s wrong. We can’t say we are a writer’s theater and then take their money.” I thought everybody would imitate this, and the Dramatist Guild would use that as leverage to say, “Well, if the biggest theater in town isn’t taking a cut, why should we give you a cut?” But they didn’t, or tried and didn’t succeed. I mean now, 40 years later, everybody’s going on about how maybe subscriptions are not such a good idea. Our membership model came about this way. Bernie thought we should have subscribers for obvious reasons, you get all the income in May and you know how much you have to play with. And I thought, what if you “join” rather than subscribe, and our audience would have the huge advantage of only coming to see the plays they wanted to see. That way, everybody who was there actually wanted to see the show. Whether they liked it or not was another question, but they chose to see it. This seemed like a cool idea, but nobody had ever done this before. So Bernie said, “Okay, we’ll compromise, we’ll have subscribers and members.”
We made the membership affordable, it was $25, and under the radar if you couldn’t afford $25, we didn’t charge you the $25. And once you were a member,the tickets to all of the shows were $10. Within like six weeks, even Bernie abandoned the subscription idea. The key was the $10 tickets. We had $600,000 back in 1985. A few years later, in 1988, we had shows running in
five theaters in New York City from BAM to La MaMa to Broadway. And that’s because the $10 tickets primed the pump and got us into those extended runs, and once we were in an extended run, you had to find another theater. I remember saying to Bernie, “Aren’t you worried that we’ll be labeled a Broadway theater?” And he said, “Not if the tickets are $10. We’re Lincoln Center Theater, no matter what the venue.”
CS: What are some of your favorite memories from your seven years as Director?
GM: The word memories is a funny word in this context, because some memories are about really in-the-weeds stuff. There used to be two entrances to the theater— one was for the staff, and one was for the artists and actors. And one of the first things I did was padlock the actors’ entrance. The actors walk in, and two steps to the right is the receptionist, and then there’s a long hallway with cubicles on the left and offices on your right, and the actors have to walk through all those people. And people stuck at their computers all day long remember why they’re doing it, and then the actors are reminded there’s a whole team behind them making this possible. That I’m proud of, that decision. That’s a vivid memory. This is a good story. You know how in Homer it’s always “the wine dark sea” and “brave Achilles”? In the mid1980s, it was always the Troubled Beaumont. Always. And I thought, I don’t want to be the head of the Troubled Beaumont. So I thought, let’s just be Lincoln Center Theater. We made up stationery with “Lincoln Center Theater” printed on it. Keep in mind, we hadn’t produced a play yet. I got a call from Nat Leventhal who was the president of Lincoln Center who said, “Could you come to my office like, now?” And I said, “Sure.” I walked in and he was sitting at his desk dangling this piece of stationery by the corner with two fingers, and he said “What is this?” I was a 36-year-old kid from Chicago. I said, “That’s our new stationery.” And he said, “Who said you could call yourselves Lincoln Center Theater?” And I’m sure I blushed and was speechless. And he said, “You better be good. Get out of my office.” ▪
WITNESSING HIST RY
WITNESSING RY
A FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY is a cause for celebration. Lincoln Center Theater’s (LCT’s) fortieth birthday occurs at a major turning point in the evolution of theaters in the United States. If you are reading this article during LCT’s 2024-2025 season, perhaps while attening a production at the Vivian Beaumont Theater complex, you are witnessing history.
Many founding or longtime artistic directors have passed the torch to a new generation of leaders, or will do so soon, and the industry at large is still recovering from the effects of a global pandemic. The audience demographic is in flux—or not, depending on which articles you read and which theater lobbies you frequent. The critical role of live performing arts, it is often said nowadays, has changed, as competing forms of entertainment and ways of engaging in culture become more popular, especially after the COVID-caused homebound period (for many) in 2020.
There has been much discussion in recent years about the ways that large, nationally known theaters like LCT could or should move ahead in this transition period. Before taking the next step, it is proper—and perhaps essential—to examine what has been accomplished so far and honor it. To provide context for the major shifts of today, it is helpful to review highlights of American theater history—and the history of the Vivian Beaumont Theater—in the mid-to late-twentieth century. Once there was a time when the importance of the performing arts was not questioned. In fact, people with means, will, and energy vied enthusiastically to create a national theater for the United States of America, and this effort was seen as a vital endeavor. According to Jim O’Quinn’s June 16, 2015 article in American Theatre magazine, “Going National: How America’s Regional Theatre Movement Changed
the Game” (a handy recap of the era that is also available in The Art of Governance, a collection of essays edited by Nancy Roche and Jaan Whitehead), non-profit theaters expanded across the country gradually. A few pioneering resident companies were established in the late 1940s and early 1950s, for instance, in Dallas (Margo Jones’ Theatre ’47 and its annual iterations) and Washington, DC (Arena Stage, founded by Zelda and Tom Fichandler and Edward Mangum in 1950).
A short time later, the blossoming of many theaters that still thrive today intensified, coinciding with the growth of the Ford Foundation’s arts grants program, led by W. McNeil Lowry. Arts creators, administrators, and philanthropists across the country sought to improve the quality of and access to American theater. “America had a hefty cultural inferiority complex in the late 1950s,” wrote John Kreidler in “Leverage Lost: The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era,” a paper published in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society in the summer of 1996. “With the emergence of America as the world’s post-war economic dynamo, there was an increasing mandate for comparable supremacy in the arts and culture.”
The founding of several more resident theaters in communities across the United States dovetailed with the quest to establish an official national theater. As stated in Helen Sheehy’s article 6 Dreams (which appears in this edition of LCT Review), in 1958, Vivian Beaumont Allen donated $3 million to build a home for a national theater on Lincoln Center’s campus. When she provided that gift, she was the vice president of the New York Chapter of the American National Theatre and Academy.
Between the opening of the space in 1965 and the establishment twenty years later of Lincoln Center Theater, the entity celebrating its 40-year history this season, other contenders were hailed prematurely as America’s long-sought prestigious national theater. In the 1960s, as Elia Kazan was starting the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center (which performed off-Broadway while its planned future home was being built), Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio Theater was established. Kazan and Strasberg had been colleagues in the Group Theatre, and Strasberg now headed the Actors Studio, the home of a technique called Method acting made famous by students including Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe.
But the Actors Studio Theater did not last long. Neither did the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center. After several companies and leaders failed
LEAH MADDRIE
to take hold in the Vivian Beaumont Theater, hope was nearly lost.
On July 17, 1977, after the departure of Joe Papp as the artistic leader in the space, Richard Eder wrote an article in The New York Times that asked, “The Vivian Beaumont Concept—Was It An Impossible Dream?” Frank Rich wrote a dire article on August 7, 1983, in the Times asking, “Can the Beaumont Become a Vital Company?” After lamenting the failure of so many enterprises in the building and bemoaning the years that—by that point—the space had remained vacant, he declared, “We need that company because the very future of our theater demands it.”
In the 1980s, a second wave of attempts to form a major American theater occurred. An October 5, 1983 Washington Post article, “Birth of a National Theater” by Richard L. Coe and David Richards, announced that “Beginning in the fall of 1984, Washington will be the home of a new national theater company to be housed at the Kennedy Center.” Kennedy Center Chairman Roger L. Stevens is quoted saying, “New York has a bad track record. They’ve tried many times to set up a national company and not been successful.”
FORTY YEARS LATER, LINCOLN CENTER THEATER HAS COMBINED THE IDEALS OF THE RESIDENT THEATER MOVEMENT AND THE STATURE OF A NATIONAL THEATER . . .
Nevertheless, in June 1984 in New York City, Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the theater as it is known today, was formed under the chairmanship of former New York City Mayor John Lindsay to produce work at the Beaumont Theater on Lincoln Center’s campus. At approximately the same time, director Peter Sellars was hired to lead the American National Theater (ANT) at the Kennedy Center. Ironically, that new theater was related to the American National Theatre of which Vivian Beaumont had been the New York Chapter Vice President.
ANT’s first official production, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, opened in March 1985, with Patti LuPone as Lady Percy. In New York that spring, Director Gregory Mosher and Executive Producer Bernard Gersten were hired to run Lincoln Center Theater. LCT’s first official show, a double bill of David Mamet plays, Prairie Du Chien and The Shawl, opened in December of 1985.
By late summer of 1986, ANT announced that Mr. Sellars was taking a leave of absence, and several ANT staff members were laid off,
effectively ending that iteration of ANT. At LCT, The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare was running at the Beaumont Theater after succeeding well beyond expectations at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, and LCT was enjoying its first hit. A year later, ANT’s Lady Percy, Patti LuPone, starred in Anything Goes, another early LCT hit.
Forty years later, Lincoln Center Theater has combined the ideals of the resident theater movement and the stature of a national theater, producing work ranging from large-scale plays and musicals at the Beaumont, its Broadway house; to shows by established authors at the Newhouse, its midsize theater; to new works at the Claire Tow theater, a space with slightly over 100 seats built on top of the Vivian Beaumont. The Claire Tow opened in spring 2012 to house LCT’s most recent theater program, LCT3, which was established in 2008 to produce work by a new generation of artists for the next generation of audiences. LCT3 produced work at the Duke on 42nd Street while its home over the Beaumont was being built.
Who knows what will happen next? It is quite clear that the ground is shifting. (Literally. In March 2024, just before this piece was written, there was a small earthquake in New York City days before an eclipse.) Soon after the theater reopened after the worst of the pandemic in spring 2021, Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth was revived on the Beaumont stage with a reimagined script directed by Lincoln Center Resident Director Lileana Blain-Cruz. As the character Sabina says in that play, we are “Always beginning again. That’s all we do! Over and over again. Always beginning again.”
In that Richard Eder article in The New York Times about the difficulties of matching the Vivian Beaumont Theater with the right company to fill its stages, he said of the grand space, “Hope and expectation were built into it and will not leave it.”
Consider it an honor to bear witness to this era. Enjoy LCT’s 40th season, and take it all in.
I confess I am struggling with the reality of realizing the remarkable and exquisite reign of ANDRÉ BISHOP as producing artistic director of the Lincoln Center Theater is about to end.
The theater under his guidance has proven to be a second home to me over the years and decades, and the support of Lincoln Center Theater has contributed enormously to my own career and the development of material I would never have dreamed might be offered to me.
As a result, I’ve been asked to comment on my friend André and his achievements. And I find, somewhat to my surprise, I had previously been asked similarly in the past to contribute to a profile published originally in Vanity Fair in 2016. Looking over that article, I realized how consistent a shining light and inspiration André has been in my own life, and because of that very consistency, because his integrity, taste, and leadership remain in my estimation, individual and stellar, I would humbly suggest revisiting it once more.
What I said, then, I still mean.
That his presence will be missed is a colossal understatement.
—————
NDRÉ BISHOP WORRIES. That much is clear. Within the generous confines of his warmth and support, you can sense the worry. It never robs him of wit, and it never stops that sly, conspiratorial smile, but he worries. You would, too! After all, he’s run two consecutive and wildly successful theater endeavors (the only person I’ve ever known to turn the trick twice): first, Playwrights Horizons, which he inherited from its progenitor, Bob Moss, turning it into one of the most prolific and important of Off Broadway birth sites, and for the past 25 years Lincoln Center Theater, with its trio of beautiful performance spaces, tucked like Russian dolls into an elegant corner of the Upper West Side, where classics, premieres, debuts, and spectacle vie for attention, bumping up against and spilling over into Broadway on
(Right) André Bishop and Jack O’Brien in the Vivian Beaumont Theater during rehersals for The Coast of Utopia, Part 1: Shipwreck
a regular basis, and earning him an astonishing total of 15 Tony Awards!
He’s had help, of course, and he welcomes it, whether it’s the JuneNovember partnership he achieved with the legendary Bernard Gersten, himself something of a singular chapter in American theater, or the symbiosis he’s encouraged with director Bartlett Sher, his go-to man for everything from new drama to sumptuous revivals. He’s enjoyed remarkably smooth continuity over the years with his brilliant right-hand associate, Julia Judge, in such a way that you never feel you are being handled, even when you are being handled. That in and of itself is a minor miracle in this business.
“Jack!” the deeply mellifluous voice responds whenever you call. “I was just thinking of you!”
It may well be true: he has never been able to lie effectively, and somehow, somewhere, over the years he managed to lose the impulse. But he’s never cruel either. Considerate. Measured. Thoughtful. He will sit through a run-through of your nascent work, arms folded before him, chuckling, watchful, listening, and, after the requisite reassurances, withdraw upstairs until you are ready
and able to hear a beautifully judged version of truth. It never fails to apply. And so, finally, he remains for many of us the perfect editor, collaborator, cheerleader—never competitive, ever supportive, abundant with that rarest of human glories: loyalty! He loves your success—he courts it. But first and primarily, he loves you! And so we all return, we all respond, we all remain the recipients. He is, at last, the true and perfect gentleman of the theater. ▪
A SINGULAR SPACE
BARTLETT SHER
HALFWAY THROUGH THE SECOND ACT of The Light in the Piazza, a distressed Clara Johnson faced the greatest dilemma of her life when she overheard her mother on the phone with her father revealing a secret kept from young Clara about her accident as a young child. The news struck her with a truth about her injury and disability that was painful, damaging, and irrevocable. Until now, the theater had been filled with the great piazzas and streets of Florence, but the light she had previously sung about in the first act was now wholly different. In an instant, the set opened up to a vast, empty space dominated by a giant cyclorama as young Clara, in a white wedding dress, raced through the flooding light in a swell of music and flung herself in despair onto the stage with a profound open cadenza of anguish—completely alone and in the grips of damaging and profound truth.
It was heartbreaking theater that could only have happened in the exceptional embrace of the Vivian Beaumont.
As a director, I have been fortunate to work in some of the greatest theaters in the world from La Scala in Milan, to the Sydney Opera House, to the Festspielhaus in Salzburg, to Japan and the West End and Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera and all over the United States, but none of these houses for me compare with what is possible for making theater at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. What makes the Beaumont so special is its unique qualities as a thrust theater and the profound relationship it has to its audience, one unlike anywhere on Broadway. Almost all Broadway theaters are proscenium houses like a movie theater where an audience sits on one side and the action
takes place opposite within the frame of the proscenium. This provides the audience with a shared and single relationship to the play or musical. But the Beaumont is a severe thrust which comes three quarters into the audience and is itself supported by a huge upstage playing space.
Audiences at the Beaumont surround the action on three sides. This creates a deeply intimate relationship of the audience to actors and even though the house is a large one, no audience member is more than forty feet from the stage. At the same time, the house then shifts the single point of view that an audience experiences in a proscenium to fully 1,100 different points of view. Every single audience member is seeing a different show. This creates incredible challenges for a director who now must stage elegantly and carefully from all sides.
In addition, the Beaumont has the largest stage footprint in all of Broadway and is the only stage width that equals the Metropolitan Opera, not to mention enormous offstage space for scene storage. This allows
for an incredible variety of epic scenic designs. When I directed The King and I, the boat that Anna and her son arrived into the harbor in Bangkok was fully thirty-seven feet long and travelled over a hundred feet on its journey, but more impressive was how easily it was stored offstage. These are realities unseen by an audience but exceptional for a creative team.
As a result, the Beaumont has the most magnificent relationship of epic to intimate perhaps anywhere in the world. The audience gets the benefit of unparalleled intimacy with actors who are often only feet away while the mise-en-scène of the design can be simply magnificent in scale. Anyone lucky enough to see Peter Brook’s Carmen or Patti LuPone in Anything Goes or Sam Waterston in Abe Lincoln in Illinois or Victoria Clark in The Light in the Piazza or Kelli O’Hara in South Pacific have been overwhelmed by the singular power of one of the greatest spaces in the world where an audience can be so close to a performance and simultaneously so swept up in the experience.
As directors, actors, and designers we underestimate how important a great theater space can be. It lifts us. It speaks to us and challenges us. It pushes us to try things we never thought we could accomplish and it stretches us to the end of our abilities and makes us take the greatest risks. A playwright who can write for the Beaumont or a director who can move and shape scenes upon its boards or a designer who can fill it with a set or light or clothes or an actor who can push a thought throughout the room, all of this is what we long for in our work. And the Vivian Beaumont is one of the greatest of our great houses of storytelling. It has made us all better. And audiences who enter the circle of culture as they arrive at Lincoln Center expect the most of us when they arrive at the Beaumont.
But the hardest job of all is to produce great theater here. And in that way, André Bishop has been the most elegant and insightful guide of all. His understanding of what is possible here and his bravery in programming while supporting artists to thrive is unparalleled. No one else would have had the courage to produce The Coast of Utopia and given Jack O’Brien the support to pull off an extraordinary achievement. The pure breadth and scope of Utopia was unmatched on a Broadway stage, and it took the bravery of a great producer to be bold enough to do it. Because while the Beaumont challenges us, we also need great producers like André (and Bernie Gersten) to bring ideas and work to it that lifts us all and makes us understand the limitlessness of great theater.
Forty years is a very short time to celebrate a room that has such poetic and perfect qualities. But happily, we celebrate the forty years and more ahead as theater is made that will help us experience joy, confront complexity, and see the world in new ways together. And perhaps this great space will even guide us to a better place for our children and for the great cultural place we have come to love within its glorious walls. We need it now more than ever. ▪
FROM LA SCALA IN MILAN, TO THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, TO THE FESTSPIELHAUS IN SALZBURG, TO JAPAN, AND THE WEST END, AND BROADWAY, AND THE METROPOLITAN OPERA, AND ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES, BUT NONE OF THESE HOUSES FOR ME COMPARE WITH WHAT IS POSSIBLE FOR MAKING THEATER AT THE VIVIAN BEAUMONT THEATER AT LINCOLN CENTER.
I REMEMBER THE PHONE CALL . We had done a concert of South Pacific at Carnegie Hall to which I invited several Broadway producers asking for the rights to present a revival. Some were concerned about the relevance of the piece, and whether a modern-day audience would feel the same emotions that made the show a post-war hit. Do we create a black-and-white documentary film over the Overture? One of the producers had a star in mind who could in no way capture the resonance of “Some Enchanted Evening.” I also invited André Bishop.
The next day André made a gracious call thanking me for his tickets. Almost casually, he mentioned that he had always been interested in the property.“Were you to grant me the rights,” he continued, “I would put the creative team behind The Light in the Piazza on it.”
That was a lightbulb moment. Piazza had been a triumph on many levels, providing director Bart Sher with
his New York debut. The design team completely understood time and place. I was sold. I then had to convince my bosses, Rodgers and Hammerstein. I explained that Lincoln Center Theater would only guarantee a three-month run, so while it didn’t have the openended possibility of Broadway, they controlled the real estate and there was the possibility the production could be extended if business warranted. We knew a Lincoln Center Theater production would be good—they always are—so the choice was art versus commerce. Mary Rodgers and Alice Hammerstein, God love them, got it right away. The art won out. Sometimes commerce follows.
Thus began one of the most extraordinary and extraordinarily pleasant experiences of my years at Rodgers & Hammerstein. A few golden moments: in one of my touch base calls with André, he said they were working on a coup de théâtre. “What?” I asked. “I can’t say yet. We still have to figure
IT ALWAYS FELT LIKE HOME WHEN ONE OF OUR SHOWS WAS IN ANDRÉ’S HANDS.
TED CHAPIN
out if we can make it happen.” I had seen an Australian production in which an airplane flew out over the audience. What more could there be? Of course, André was talking about the stage pulling back during the overture to expose the 28-person orchestra. They figured out how to do it. Not only was it a coup de théâtre, but it put the ‘music’ back in musical. Seeing those players and hearing the orchestrations created by the great Robert Russell Bennett in 1949 was as thrilling and theatrical a moment as I had ever witnessed.
Another memory was when this unknown actor from Hawaii came in to audition for Bloody Mary. In she walked, and I thought, “mysterious . . . funny . . . fierce . . . sexy . . . forebod-
ing . . . ,” kind of everything you could want. After she left the room, casting director Bernie Telsey came in and asked if we wanted to hire her. He got unanimous yeses from everyone. He then said, “She is about to get on a plane back to Hawaii. If you want to hire her, why don’t I bring her back in the room so you can tell her?” Back in came the glorious Loretta Ables Sayre, who burst into tears upon hearing the news. And at the sitzprobe, the first time the cast meets the orchestra, she burst into tears once again, but for a different reason. As she finished “Bali Ha’i,” she said, “This is the first time in my life I have ever sung with an orchestra.” There were so many more moments: the discovery of the unknown Paulo
Szot, the stunningly painted stormy backdrop, the three Seabees doing a quick Andrews Sisters sashay
It always felt like home when one of our shows was in André’s hands. There were so many more glorious moments: Nick Hytner’s Carousel imported from the Royal National Theater providing an introduction to the amazing Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara’s Mrs. Anna in The King and I (has anyone else played both Anna and Nellie Forbush?), and finally winning a Tony Award.
My only regret: there isn’t a place in the Beaumont for people like me to hop induring a performance to catch favorite moments. No standing room, alas. A worthwhile price to pay, I guess. ▪
In the early 2010s, the editors of the Lincoln Center Theater Review sat down with the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE to discuss the original conception of Lincoln Center, as well as the ideas for renovating the complex that has now become a vital cultural institution.
EDITORS: You were the architecture critic at The New York Times when Lincoln Center opened. How did you write about it then?
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE: We all reviewed it, and we all disliked it. In fact, I remember that when the Opera opened every one of these critics went— music, architecture, art—and we all wrote these scathing pieces, and the memo that came down from Punch Sulzberger at the time was: “Couldn’t any of you have liked anything?” Well, we were right and we were wrong. There was a lot to like, but we were also creatures of our time. Certainly, I was thinking of the architecture at the time, which I admired, and I thought this was compromised. But it wasn’t, really.
ED: Compromised by what?
signature reflecting
Beaumont Plaza’s
pool, home to the monumental “Reclining Figure” by preminent midcentury sculptor Henry Moore since 1965, underwent a 2010 redesign of its Hypar Pavilion.
Architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Photograph at twilight by Chasi Annexy.
ALH: By the states of the groups that were sponsoring it. They didn’t want anything too brutal, too off-putting.
And modern architecture had a very tough look then. So it was softened, and I think agreeably so, and probably properly so.
ED: What did you like about it?
ALH: Well, I loved the open space. I loved the plaza. I liked the Beaumont.
To someone who was a modernist, the Beaumont was a very good, modern building. It still, I think, has lovely things about it. And we felt that it was not compromised as the others were.
ED: What was the thinking behind Lincoln Center and, for that matter, the Los Angeles Music Center, the South Bank in London?
ALH: First of all, it was a car-centric culture. The idea was that you should be able to drive to a center that combined all of these cultural forms and performances. Lincoln Center was done in a very monumental style, which was largely called brutalism, but it was not like the London buildings, which were pure, unadulterated brutalism. They [the Lincoln Center buildings] were sort of what I’d call soft modernism. They were more pleasing. They were watered down a bit.
ED: Were they compromises?
ALH: They were compromises, and we all objected, but we’ve all gotten to love them, including the architects Diller Scofidio+Renfro, who are renovating Lincoln Center. They are very aware of
the history and felt, as I do now, that this was a very legitimate way to build, in terms of the philosophy and the beliefs of the time. In fact, they’re working to save the architecture and do the things that need to be done to bring it all into the twenty-first century. What we’re critical of is the way these buildings were built, as temples on podiums that removed them from the city. You drove in by car. You came underneath. The whole idea of what’s going on there now is to reconnect it with the city, to reconnect it with the life of the city, and to make it peoplereceptive. And I think they’re doing a brilliant job. There are two things here: the physical and the philosophical. In fifty years, a place gets old. It’s been remodeled. Things have worked, things haven’t worked. They’ve been changed.
And everything needs repair. All the systems begin to fail. And so it all comes together in the minds of the people who are part of the complex that something needs to be done.
ED: Lincoln Center couldn’t be built today—the impulse to build something like that belongs exactly to that midcentury period, right?
ALH: Absolutely. That was the time of all the big cultural centers across the country.
ED: And do you think Diller Scofidio+ Renfro’s mission now is to make it more people-friendly?
ALH: That’s absolutely one of their major purposes. The whole philosophy of architecture has changed. That’s the point. We no longer think of architecture as something to be isolated. Already with Alice Tully Hall, they have
opened it and brought it forward to the street edge. Suddenly you’re invited into that lobby; you want to go in, whether you’re going to a performance or not.
And Diller Scofidio+Renfro were hired to look at the public spaces and do something about that terrible concrete bridge. And they ended up saying, “Well when you’re talking about public spaces, you’re talking about their connections to the buildings.” And that’s the reason for what they did to Tully Hall. Also, the Beaumont Plaza was a fine space, but it was dead. That meant something was missing. Now there will be a new restaurant. And the most wonderful thing, I think, is what they’re doing at the main entrance. There are two roads of cars, and you have to cross that. It’s horrible. The cars will go underneath and a set of low-rise stairs
The whole philosophy of architecture has changed [since Lincoln Center was originally built]. We no longer think of architecture as something to be isolated.
will invite you directly up into the plaza from the street. It’s going to be a beautiful way to enter. We all know the main plaza is a superb space; it worked from the beginning, so of course that’s not being touched, but because we’ve made a lot of technological advances in the twenty-first century there will be improvements, like lighting, and I think it will be better than ever. Then there will be a smaller set of the same kind of stairs on Sixty-fifth Street. You’ll be able to come up from the street onto the plaza, where the Beaumont is, and the café. So this is very thoughtful planning that brings it right up to the way we think about urban spaces, culture, and city life in the twenty-first century.
ED: In fifty years, when this renovation has to be remodeled, where do you think we’ll be?
ALH: Oh, they’ll do it over. They’ll do it over because by then all of this—which we hope will work beautifully and be wonderful, and be used for a long time—will go through the same cycle. And there’ll be different needs, and maybe even different kinds of cultural institutions. Who knows, in fifty years? But this is such a strong unit, and so important to the city, that I have no doubt that, even if it turned out to be overused and abused after fifty years, the same process would bring it back to life. But in terms of life and culture and architecture fifty years from now— things are always going to change. Always. ▪
The Lincoln Center Artists Group (from left to right) British prima ballerina Alicia Markova, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, Juilliard president and composer William Schuman, Juilliard music student violinist Dorothy Pixley, American soprano Lucine Amara, Austrian-born British Metropolitan
impresario Rudolf Bing, executive director of operations for the center
Newman / Getty Images.
LYNN AHRENS & STEPHEN FLAHERTY
WITHIN THESE WALLS
YOU CAN’T REALLY UNDERSTAND how to write a musical until you’ve had one produced. This makes us two of the luckiest writers around, because we’ve had not one but four musicals produced by Lincoln Center Theater.
All have been realized under the watchful, loving, and sometimes nervous guidance of three men—Ira Weitzman, who discovered and encouraged us, André Bishop, who developed and produced us, and Bernie Gersten, who not only managed the finances but threw both opening and closing night parties! Having an artistic “home” that welcomes you back time after time through failure and success is one of the rarest gifts writers can receive.
My Favorite Year, which premiered in 1992, was the first original American musical to play at the Beaumont, the first to utilize the brand-new pit,
and our first large-scale show with a full orchestra. The moment when they struck up that opening fanfare is not only unforgettable but historic—a musical theater dream come true. But the show needed work. We sat in the back row night after night, cringing as the brilliant comedienne Andrea Martin struggled to make her big song,
won the Tony Award! The show turned out to be an invaluable master class in craft—how to work with an orchestra, how to write for a star, how to rewrite under intense pressure. Thank you, Lincoln Center Theater.
Between 2002 and 2007, three of our shows opened downstairs in the Mitzi. A Man of No Importance, written
“Professional Showbizness Comedy,” land before a sea of unsmiling faces. Under the dire time constraints of previews, we frantically rewrote the number for her eccentric talents, adding Borscht-belt jokes, a silly striptease, and a wild turn on a tambourine. Just in time for the critics to arrive, she performed the new version, brought down the house, and later that year
with playwright Terrence McNally, taught us how to find the music in a withheld character and a kitchen sink world. Dessa Rose, directed by Graciela Daniele, was a dark folk opera, unlike anything we’d attempted before, but our producers trusted us to try. The Glorious Ones, set in the slapstick world of commedia dell’arte, was first produced at Pittsburgh Public Theater
HAVING AN ARTISTIC “HOME” THAT WELCOMES YOU BACK TIME AFTER TIME THROUGH FAILURE AND SUCCESS IS ONE OF THE RAREST GIFTS WRITERS CAN RECEIVE.
and then brought to New York by who else but Lincoln Center Theater. Show by show, we were supported no matter where our imaginations led.
Today, much of what we know and how we work was honed within the expansive, challenging space of the Beaumont and the intimate hug of the Mitzi. We’ve strode the underground halls, passing show posters of our idols, and eventually show posters of our own. We’ve seen Ira knitting to calm his nerves and beheld Bernie tiptoeing in at intermission to catch part of a preview. We’ve gnawed on our pencils in the last row, madly scribbled rewrites in the lobbies, and choked up as André Bishop told us, “I believe in what you do.” We even wrote a song christening the Claire Tow Theater. Maybe the spirit of these two seasoned Lincoln Center Theater writers will help inspire newcomers.
We’re deeply honored and grateful to be part of the Lincoln Center Theater family and thrilled to celebrate this momentous anniversary. We wouldn’t be the writers we are but for these hallowed walls and the people who gave us chance after chance to work within them. To quote A Man of No Importance, “We are blessed in our friends.” ▪
SE T AND RESE T
The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a wonderful “thrust” stage, my favorite kind to work on. For Act One, James Lapine said that he wanted a world where Moss Hart could run madly up and downstairs and bang on closed doors, a world which could physically exhibit the enthusiasm of a youth trying to break into show business. The set was a massive turntable with a three-story skeletal world of 1920s New York City with all the play’s locations existing as little spaces within it. In Flying Over Sunset, the set was inspired by a very abstracted notion of the human brain. It started as a perfect circular sixty- foot diameter volume of space which then twisted and morphed into the various real and imagined locations of the story.
BEOWULF BORITT
(Top)
Laughter in the H use
In 1985, BERNARD GERSTEN joined Lincoln Center Theater as executive producer, a role he served in until 2013. In preparation for a special 2009 edition of the Review, Mr. Gersten sat in his office and penned this essay for the Lincoln Center Theater Review about his career, which spanned over 120 shows at just Lincoln Center Theater alone. Mr. Gersten passed away in 2020 at the age of 97. For this 40th Anniversary edition, the Review is honored to reprint this piece and share Mr. Gersten’s voice with our audiences of today.
Bernard Gersten with his daughter, Jenny Gersten, at the 2013 Tony Awards.
BEFORE COMING TO WORK at Lincoln Center Theater, I was doing my Wanderjahr. I got fired from my job at the Public Theater by Joseph Papp in August of 1978, and my first job after that was working as the producer for Michael Bennett’s Ballroom. When that nose-dived, I co-produced John Guare’s Bosoms and Neglect. First we did it in collaboration with Gregory Mosher at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and then we brought it to Broadway, to the Longacre Theatre, where it opened on a Thursday, played Friday and Saturday, and closed on Saturday, very sadly. After that, I received a telephone call
from Francis Ford Coppola—whom I had met years before, very, very briefly, when he came to visit at the Public, and was treated high-handedly by Joe. Francis said, “I’m forming a new kind of studio, a Hollywood studio, and I remember you from when we met at the Public Theater, and I’d like you to come out here and work with me.” And I went out there. It was a monumental decision, because my wife, Cora [Cahan], was in the middle of building The Joyce Theater, our two kids were in school, and nobody really knew what the Francis thing was. But he had just acquired Zoetrope Studios in Hollywood—this was just before the release of Apocalypse Now, which opened during my first month there. It was an astonishing event. Francis was very exciting, and I worked there for two and a half years. We made five movies for $50 million—One from the Heart, The Escape Artist, Hammett, The Outsiders, and The Black Stallion Returns—and together that grossed less than a million dollars. We were bankrupt.
So I came back to New York and went to work as the executive producer at Radio City Music Hall for two years, during which time I produced Porgy and Bess—directed by Jack O’Brien, I should add! The first and only “legitimate” production ever to play the Music Hall. And then the Music Hall kind of pulled back. It didn’t go bankrupt, it just contracted. And in the fall of 1984 I got a job working for Alexander Cohen. We were producing the Tony Awards, and among the plays that we produced at that time was Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist at the Belasco Theatre, with Jonathan Pryce, Bill Irwin, and Patti LuPone—just so you know how the same characters reoccur in one’s life. It was really very good. Anyway, we opened and the
show didn’t do very well. We closed it. Things were really slowing down at Alex Cohen’s.
Simultaneously, I was teaching theater management at Columbia in the graduate school. One of the things I would do with my students was create a model for running the Vivian Beaumont Theater, which had been empty for years. I would say, “I don’t know what the big problem is with the Beaumont, but here’s what needs to be done there.” So we discussed producing about three plays a year at the Beaumont, and two or three plays a year at the Mitzi Newhouse. We discussed what they would cost, and how long they should run. It was a model.
I was doing this and one day the dean of the school, Schuyler Chapin, came to see Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and when I saw him afterward he said, “Bernie, I really would like to talk to you about the Vivian Beaumont Theater.” And I said, “It’s funny you should say that—I’ve been teaching the Beaumont in my class.” So we arranged to have a drink and he said, “What are your opinions about the Beaumont?” And I said, “Let me write a paper.” So I did, and I must say, I did it with some innocence. I certainly had no aspiration to work at the Beaumont. I hadn’t thought of it seriously. Well, maybe a little bit. I submitted the paper to Schuyler and he liked it. I said that I thought at this time [the spring of 1985] the Beaumont was more needed in the New York theater than perhaps at any other time.
Schuyler said,“Would you come and meet with John Lindsay and me? John Lindsay’s in charge of a search group that’s looking for new management for the Beaumont. We have already identified Gregory Mosher as a possible artistic director.”
I went and had breakfast with Schuyler and John—who had given me an award when I was working at the Public Theater, and whom I, like everyone else, admired so and adored. John asked, “Would you serve as a
I said that I thought at this time [the spring of 1985] the Beaumont was more needed in the New York theater than perhaps at any other time.
consultant? We have money—we’ll give you money if you serve as a consultant.” And I said, “John, I have a job, I don’t need to be hired. Of course, I’ll gladly serve as a consultant.” Then he switched gears seamlessly and said, “Well, actually, will you take the job with Gregory Mosher and run the Beaumont?” And that was the offer.
I was reluctant at first—even though I knew and liked Gregory, and we got along well, and he was very admiring of me—in large part because of the things that had happened at the Public Theater; my fight with Joe was historic already. When the offer came, I said, “Let me think about it—let me talk to Gregory.”
In the end, Cora came up with all the reasons that I should take the job, and felt that the timing to make a go of the theater was ideal.
The board had not yet been defined. There were some good people there.
Adele Block, Anna Crouse, Joan Cullman, Linda LeRoy Janklow, Ray Larsen, Victor Palmieri, Elizabeth Peters, and Arthur Ross were among them. Anna gave a tea at her apartment at which I was introduced to members of the board. There I was, balancing a teacup in one hand and a pastry in the other, when they asked, “Well, what would it take to run the Beaumont?” I took out an envelope and a pen, and I said, “Well, if we were to do three plays at the Beaumont and they cost an average of a million five for each, and if we did two or three plays at the Mitzi and they cost two-fifty each . . . ” Anyway, all added up it came to $12 million, which meant we needed to raise $5 million and earn $7 million. Years later, Anna told me that nothing had ever made the budget for a theater so clear to her as that very simple back-ofthe-envelope calculation. And I said, “Well, I really worked on it over a long period of time!” It assumed something like you’d sell 75 percent of the tickets at an average ticket price of $15, or whatever it was. But it was all quite simple and unpretentious. What it didn’t discuss was the artistic aspects of the venture.
But in my paper for Schuyler I’d written about artistic goals, about the quality of the theater—what the theater must do. I said that it must achieve the trust of artists. That it should be built upon the willingness of artists or, better, the eagerness of artists, to entrust their artistic lives to this theater. And that trust—that was the thing that had to be created at Lincoln Center, because it didn’t exist. There was no history. The Beaumont was just a place that had been a failed theater over many, many regimes.
I believed you just had to win the trust of the artists by virtue of how you behaved, what artistic choices you made, and what administrative choices you made. One of the best examples was the second play that we put on, John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves It was a very popular play. We opened at the Mitzi Newhouse, and we had more customers than we had seats.
The Beaumont was empty, and one day we scratched our collective heads. And I don’t know which head was being scratched, or who the scratcher was, but we said, “What would happen if we moved it up to the Beaumont?” And the conclusion was that we would sell out and the Beaumont would be open.
In all the history of the two theaters, nothing had ever moved from the Mitzi to the Beaumont. But saying, “Here’s a show that’s playing in this three-hundred-seat theater, it’s very popular, and could probably play very successfully in a thousandseat theater, let’s move it!” was very innovative, especially since the show was perfect in the Mitzi, a perfect fit. We took the company up onstage and walked them around. There were ghosts there. Finally, somebody turned to Christopher Walken and said, “Chris! You’re the only one of us who ever played in the Beaumont. Why does the Beaumont have such a bad reputation? What’s wrong with it?” And Chris said, “Well what’s wrong with the Beaumont is when you come out onstage, and you look out there, you see all these red seats.” To which the answer was, “Chris, we will sell all the seats, all the tickets, so you won’t see the red seats.” And he said, “No problem.”
We did move it up. And, of course, the lesson learned was the same lesson
that I had learned some years earlier, when we moved A Chorus Line, which was perfect in this three-hundred-seat configuration at the Public’s Newman Theater. We wondered how it could possibly move to the Shubert Theater with fifteen hundred seats. The answer was: when you add a thousand people you add theatrons, which are the unit of theatrical energy. They’re like electrons or ions or protons. They are given off by various theatrical things— actors, playwrights. Words give off theatrons. Words delivered add more theatrons. Actors with virtuosity add even more theatrons. The room acts as a kind of magnifier—a reflector, like one of those orgone boxes of Wilhelm Reich. You release the theatrons, they bounce against the wall and then bounce back into the work onstage, and they energize it and give it energy. A theater without a roof is hopeless! All the theatrons escape through the open top!
Blue Leaves wasn’t the first time that an Off Broadway show had moved to a Broadway house. But it had never happened here at Lincoln Center, and it turned out to be a very simple matter. We closed down on a Sunday
and we opened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. We did it with no fanfare. All of a sudden, it was there. The most important thing was that audiences were coming in great numbers. And suddenly the ghosts of the Beaumont were banished. The laughter of The House of Blue Leaves in the house purged the Beaumont of its ghosts and its history and its malaise.
The journey of The House of Blue Leaves was the initial journey of the theater—it moved from the Mitzi to the Beaumont in March or April, in time for the Tony Awards. It was nominated for Tonys; it won some Tonys. Meanwhile, we were planning the first Beaumont season, and we almost had enough money. With the success of The House of Blue Leaves, the strengthening of the Board, and that first flash of achievement, there was a little spark of hope in the breasts of everyone involved. It was the effect of a hit.
Gregory was asked to write a mission statement, and he said, “We’re going to do good plays.” And I remembered what Norris Houghton said to Constantin Stanislavsky. Houghton went to Russia fresh out of Princeton and met Stanislavsky, who said, “So young man, what do you intend to do? What do you intend to do in the theater?” And Houghton said, “We want to do great plays.” And Stanislavsky sneered or snorted, or whatever he did. He said, “Everybody wants to do great plays. But how will you do them? What will you do to make your plays great?” Gregory and I reduced the whole ethos of our theater to a few words: We’re going to do good plays, and we’re going to have popular prices. Actually, it wasn’t such a bad slogan. We erred on the side of
understatement. All you say is “here’s what it is.” It’s a turkey sandwich on rye with Russian, and if you like it fine; if you don’t, order something else. Our language was to be more matterof-fact, more plainspoken—not the language of the institutional theaters or the regional theaters, where without a proper statement of intention a production just couldn’t begin. And what do they do? Every theater does the same goddamned stuff! You do all the plays, and you do all the musicals. And everybody wants young playwrights, everybody wants emerging this and emerging that. The whole character of the individual theater is based upon the taste of the artistic director. That’s all there is. That’s all that differentiates one theater from another.
When I was here with Joe there were successes, but nothing had quite that electricity. And, especially because of the long, tortured years of darkness, with The House of Blue Leaves there were sparks struck. I usually make an opening-day speech to the companies the first time we go into rehearsal. It’s like lighting a fire—you get one leaf to burn and you hope that the leaf will spread the fire. You fan it, you blow on it, you shelter it from the wind. You do whatever seems necessary to get the fire to glow and to burn.
I don’t remember what the speeches were like for those first productions of the first full season at the Beaumont. But there was an excitement. John Lithgow was here, and Richard Thomas and Jerry Zaks and Tony Walton. The theater was going.
A not-for-profit theater in New York is a thing unto itself. And not-for-profit
in New York is different from not-forprofit theater in Detroit or some other city, where they are usually the only game in town. New York is not the same. There was a temptation, since there was a history of the Beaumont’s being a replica of not-for-profit theaters around the country, of having a subscription, and doing a certain number of plays and doing experimental plays at the Mitzi. Those were the conventions. And they were applied here—certainly by Jules Irving and, to a certain extent, even by Joe when the Public Theater came here. But the results tended to be bland up here. It’s as though the marble over-powered those modest ambitions and aspirations.
We started out unconventionally— our Board, having hired us, failed to say, “Now tell us exactly what you’re going to do, and then do exactly what you tell us you’re going to do.” So a style of being somewhat improvisational emerged—responding to the circumstances that you either have made for yourself or that you find yourself in, not being caught in the web of a subscription that required you to open a certain play on a certain date. We have a few great inventions that are so simple and so obvious— a first-night dinner for the company after their first preview before an audience, flowers for all on the first preview, wonderful dressing rooms, and a farewell drink or two or three on closing performances, so you don’t just walk out of the dressing room into the night with your bags and straight to unemployment. You get a little haze of alcohol to get you through. That’s what makes the trust. But the underlying basis for trust is artistic integrity. These decisions were made from an artistic perspective—to preserve, enhance, and assure the artistry of the work that we are engaged in to the best of our ability. It wasn’t that we didn’t do stupid things, make mistakes, put on bad plays. None of that was precluded. But you always strove to do good and well. My illustration of what exemplifies trust is the trust that exists between
trapeze artists. Trapeze artists literally entrust their lives to the catcher. They say, “I know that when I do my triple something, and I reach out, your hands will be there.” And that, to me, is such a vivid image. The catcher has a special role. And I said that our theater is the catcher and the artists who work here are the flyers. And you have to imbue them with the sense that the catcher will always be there at the appointed time.
I like to go to curtain-down. I go a couple of times a week. I want to be sure the audience is still having a good time. That they’re responding to the show, and that the cast is having a good time. It makes me happy. And certainly I’m driven—in part because I am a hedonist and in part because I worked for a few years with Joe, who suffered from anhedonia. I don’t understand anhedonia. My slogan is “Eat it, touch it, stroke it, hug it.”
And I think for the people in the rehearsal hall that state of ecstasy is what you strive for when you are working together at the top of your peak with people who are as good as you are or better. The best example we had of that collectively was The Coast of Utopia. Their high was sky-high. It was incredible—they all knew it and they all loved it. But there’s also something else: the theater has a sense of humor. I mean, the theater has a sense of humor. I have a sense of humor. I like jokes, I like wit, I like play. These are things that are necessary to my own life, and I choose colleagues and comrades and friends who have similar needs and desires and abilities. So I am still amazed at my own ability to close circuits and put wild things together and be amused by it. What we have here, it’s not a rabbinical society; it’s not a church. It’s a theater. For me, one of the most interesting questions about the current incarnation of Lincoln Center Theater is how you explain the fact that this theater has run along uninterruptedly for twenty-four years—not challenged by crisis or desperation, with financial successes and failures, but never once has there been a crisis board meeting.
There’s been only one change of artistic directors. There’s been no change in my job—I’ve been here all the time. And when there was a change in artistic directors there was no search committee. There was no torture. There was no extended process. It wasn’t leaderless for a long period of time. When Gregory said, “Well, I’m out of here”—and that’s what he said—Victor Palmieri asked me if there was anybody out there. And I put together a list. And Cora asked, “Why didn’t you put André on the list?” And I said, “He wouldn’t do it. He’s too involved with Playwrights Horizons. He would never leave there.”
André Bishop was an old friend of some years, so I called him and said, “André I’m calling you to let you know that on Monday or Tuesday word is coming out that Gregory is leaving Lincoln Center Theater.” And he said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” And I said, “So he’s leaving, and I’ve got a list of people, all of whom you know, so I just wanted to get your opinion about them.” And I ran down the list of candidates, and he said, “X is wonderful” and “X . . . couldn’t ask for anybody smarter, more pleasant to work with . . .” And so on for each of them. And then I said, “And what about André Bishop?” He paused for only a moment, and he said, “André might be very interesting.” And then he went on and talked about André in the third person, with exactly the same amount of regard and objectivity as he’d spoken about the others. And I remember his summary. He said, “And all things, considered, André might be the most idiosyncratic of all of them. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.” And I said, “Can we meet on Monday?” And he said, “Yes, let’s meet on Monday.” And I hung up the phone and said to Cora, “André’s going to take the job.” ▪
I usually make an opening-day speech to the companies the first time we go into rehearsal. It’s like lighting a fire— you get one leaf to burn and you hope that the leaf will spread the fire. You fan it, you blow on it, you shelter it from the wind. You do whatever seems necessary to get the fire to glow and to burn.
L ESS NS FR M
r BISH P
I FIRST MET ANDRÉ BISHOP when I was thirty-one years old; he took me out to lunch at Fiorello’s on the Upper West Side to tell me that he wanted to produce my play, The Clean House, at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse. For a young playwright, this is a gob-smacking, life-changing revelation, like finding a Fabergé egg in a henhouse. André was apologetic, though. He didn’t have room for a season and a half or so. Could I wait a year and a half to have the play produced? True, I had another offer on the table from another theater in New York City. Now that I know André better, it doesn’t surprise me that he was apologetic while giving me the best news a playwright could hope for. He is unfailingly polite, modest, honest, and gentlemanly. He does not assume that what is best for him is also best for you. That’s a rarity in general in life, and also in the American theater. I was astonished. For the rest of that meal, André and I ate good Italian food and talked about life, and art. Not only had I never had a play produced in New York City before, I had never been to Fiorello’s with such a cosmopolitan, wise person. He had a deep sonorous voice, a knack for finding just the right word, rosy cheeks, amused and penetrating eyes, and a thick head of silvery hair combed precisely to one side.
After lunch, already being pretty sure of what I would do, I called my friend Beth Henley over the phone. Should I accept Lincoln Center Theater’s offer, even though it was a year and a half wait, or take a more timely offer for another theater for my play? Beth said, “Oh my God! Go to Lincoln Center!
You’ll have your play done by that glorious fountain! Come on! Honestly, the best part of making theater is anticipation anyway. So you’ll have a whole year and a half to wait and hope. Making a play and the aftermath is never as good as imagining it.”
So I said yes to André Bishop. That yes would alter my life for the better. André would go on to produce four more of my plays at the Mitzi and one on Broadway, making for a total of five. I figure doing one play with a theater is like a one-night stand, two is dating, three is getting engaged, four is getting married, and five is a real rarity—a long marriage. I honestly cannot believe my luck in finding André and Lincoln Center Theater so young as an artistic home. I almost fear I daren’t say it aloud, for fear of tempting fate.
I didn’t realize that when I went into rehearsal for The Clean House I would have my six-month old baby, Anna, with me. That’s what happens when you wait a year and a half for a production, you might have another kind of production that’s unanticipated. André was the first artistic director to offer me an office for breastfeeding where the baby could also nap. Anne Cattaneo was the first dramaturg to offer me toys and rattles from her office. Jill Clayburgh, Vanessa Aspillaga, and Blair Brown were the first actors to bounce Anna on their laps. The costume shop made a little apron for Anna out of some extra fabric printed with apples.
As I went to rehearsals at the Mitzi that fall, I saw Tom Stoppard out smoking in the alley, impossibly
SARAH RUHL
charismatic (he was working on The Coast of Utopia then). When I went to a dinner party at Cora and Bernie Gersten’s that October, I brought little Anna, who pulled the glasses off of André’s face. When we sat down to eat and I realized I needed to breastfeed the baby, Tom raised a glass and said, “To Sarah! The only one at this table who is currently working!”
I SAID YES TO ANDRÉ BISHOP. THAT YES WOULD ALTER MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER.
And so it was that I learned how theater families are formed in that basement of the Mitzi Newhouse. I felt so protected making my first play in New York City in that sub-basement. With its sturdy concrete underground, the rehearsal rooms seemed almost designed to protect one from a bomb going off, and making a new play in New York City can have an incendiary feeling. The Mitzi is a temporary dwelling for artists, a refuge. The architecture of the Mitzi reminds us that we are all in this thing together. The circularity, the democratic embrace of the audience, reminds me that theater is always telling a story with and to the audience, not walling them off. You can feel the ether in that theater.
André signed an opening night card for each person working on The Clean House, which I recently found
saved in my desk. I learned later that this is not standard operating procedure for an artistic director to sign opening night cards. He also gave the whole creative team a gift of a key ring charm embossed with the play’s title. I learned later that André religiously and democratically rotates these charms on his own key chain. The opening night of The Clean House was a success. It was back before this current time of digital reviews, when opening night parties can turn into the zombie apocalypse around 10 p.m., people surreptitiously checking their phones by the cheese plate or in the bathroom. Back then, Jill Clayburgh said she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, so she ran home in the rain
prevaricating producers—André often seems to be the last gentleman standing. Radiating calm and good will, he makes honest forthright decisions that are best for the artist and for the institution.
I’ll never forget having lunch with André after I’d done two plays at LCT and he wanted to commission a third; he is more interested in the lifespan of the playwright than in a one-off product. I told him a bunch of ideas that I had for new plays. One of them, a story about Tibetan monastics and reincarnation, I thought seemed almost impossible to produce, but André said that was the subject matter that made my eyes light up the most, and so, he said, that is the one I should write.
to check the paper, and ran back in saying, “It’s a rave!”
My going to André for wisdom and advice didn’t stop with the plays I did at his theater—The Clean House, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (at the Lyceum on Broadway), The Oldest Boy, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, and Becky Nurse of Salem. I called André when I had a theatrical pickle in general; I knew he would always give me confidential, incisive counsel.
I knew that he valued me as a person, a person with a private life and a family, and not just as a worker bee. In show business—a world that, on bad days, feels full of backstabbing gossips, divas, false friends,
When an actor dropped out of The Oldest Boy one day before rehearsals to do a television pilot, and the creative team panicked, André calmly said we’d delay rehearsals and opening so that we could audition and find the right new actor. Daniel Swee, the most dramaturgicallyminded casting agent I know, sprung into gear. A splendid actor was found. When Didi O’Connell got Covid during Becky Nurse of Salem, André calmly gave us ten more days of rehearsal to make the play. André is always there when you need him, and not hovering when you don’t. The protected artist-centered atmosphere at the Mitzi has been, for me, one that always projected calm, and the feeling that we were all on the same team, and that we were all valued for our contribution.
André has taught me: how to leave a play alone when it is done; how to collaborate honestly and kindly; and how to go on doing the thing you love for your entire life. He has a parade of Tony Awards in his office, one version of what counts as success
in the American theater. But to me, the success of André Bishop and Lincoln Center Theater goes much much deeper, and I am so grateful to be one of the beneficiaries. Ralph Waldo Emerson defined success this way, and I think these words apply deeply to my dear friend André. Success is: TO LAUGH OFTEN AND MUCH; TO WIN THE RESPECT OF INTELLIGENT PEOPLE AND THE AFFECTION OF CHILDREN; TO EARN THE APPRECIATION OF HONEST CRITICS AND ENDURE THE BETRAYAL OF FALSE FRIENDS; TO APPRECIATE BEAUTY, TO FIND THE BEST IN OTHERS; TO LEAVE THE WORLD A BIT BETTER WHETHER BY A HEALTHY CHILD, A GARDEN PATCH, OR A REDEEMED SOCIAL CONDITION; TO KNOW EVEN ONE LIFE HAS BREATHED EASIER BECAUSE YOU LIVED. THIS IS TO HAVE SUCCEEDED.
, a name intertwined with the very fabric of Lincoln Center Theater, stands as a testament to the power of artistic vision and dedication. His influence, both as an artist and a collaborator, has left an indelible mark on the institution and the broader landscape of American theater.
McMullan’s journey with Lincoln Center Theater began in the early 1980s when he was commissioned to create a series of posters for the theater’s productions. His distinctive style, characterized by vibrant colors and intricate line work, captured the essence of each play in a way that was both evocative and timeless. From the whimsical illustrations for Anything Goes to the haunting imagery of The Light in the Piazza, McMullan’s posters became iconic symbols of the theater’s productions, adorning walls and billboards across New York City and beyond.
But McMullan’s contributions to Lincoln Center Theater extended far beyond his work as a poster artist. As a member of the theater’s artistic community, he forged deep connections with playwrights, directors, and actors, offering his insights and talents to help bring their visions to life.
What sets McMullan apart as an artist is his ability to capture the essence of a play in a single image. His posters serve as visual distillations of complex narratives, offering audiences a glimpse into the world of the play before they even step foot inside the theater. In this way, McMullan not only promotes the productions but also enriches the audience’s experience, inviting them to engage with the themes and characters on a deeper level.
Beyond his contributions to individual productions, McMullan’s impact on Lincoln Center Theater can be felt in the way he has helped
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shape its identity as a cultural institution. Through his art, he has helped to define the theater’s aesthetic sensibility, infusing its productions with a sense of energy and vitality that is both distinctive and enduring. His posters, with their bold colors and dynamic compositions, reflect the theater’s commitment to innovation and excellence, serving as beacons for theatergoers seeking meaningful and memorable experiences.
Moreover, McMullan’s presence at Lincoln Center Theater has helped foster a sense of community among artists, patrons, and theater enthusiasts. His workshops and lectures have inspired countless aspiring artists, while his collaborations with other creative minds have enriched the cultural landscape of New York City and beyond. In this way, McMullan has not only contributed to the success of Lincoln Center Theater but has also helped to cultivate the next generation of talent, ensuring that his legacy will endure for years to come. ▪
The Claire Tow Theater, nestled on top of the Vivian Beaumont, stands as a monument to architectural wit and artistic innovation. Home to the groundbreaking LCT3, its opening in 2012 marked a pivotal moment in the city’s cultural landscape, showcasing a commitment to fostering emerging talent and pushing the boundaries of theatrical expression. At the heart of this endeavor was the visionary architect, Hugh Hardy, whose creative genius left an indelible mark on the fabric of New York’s architectural legacy.
aspect of the theater’s design. From the acoustics optimized to enhance the auditory experience to the flexible seating arrangements that could adapt to various performance styles, every element was carefully crafted to ensure an immersive and unforgettable experience for both artists and audiences alike. One of the most remarkable features of the Claire Tow Theater was its intimate size, allowing for a sense of closeness and connection between performers and spectators. This deliberate choice echoed Hardy’s belief in the power of intimate spaces to foster meaningful interactions and emotional resonance.
Since its opening, the Claire Tow Theater and LCT3 have had a transformative impact on the landscape of New York City theater. As a dedicated space for emerging playwrights and experimental works, it has provided a platform for diverse voices and innovative storytelling. LCT3’s commitment to nurturing new talent and pushing artistic boundaries has invigorated the city’s theatrical scene, offering audiences a fresh perspective on contemporary issues and themes.
Through its groundbreaking work, the Claire Tow Theater and LCT3 have not only enriched the artistic community but also sparked important conversations and pushed the boundaries of what theater can achieve. As a beacon of creativity and innovation, it continues to inspire and captivate audiences, cementing its place as a vital hub of cultural exchange in the heart of the city. ▪ Hugh Hardy, renowned for his abilty to blend functionality with elegance, was approached with the task of designing a theater space that would embody the essence of creativity and provide a platform for new voices in the performing arts. The result was a striking modern structure that seamlessly integrated with the surrounding Lincoln Center complex while exuding its own unique character.
Hugh Hardy’s meticulous attention to detail was evident in every
by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty—— on the occasion of the opening of the Claire Tow Theater
COMPOSER: So. A song for the opening of the new theater. An opening number for the opening of a new theater.
LYRICIST: Hmm. So many ways to go with this. Could I have a little music first?
COMPOSER: There are a lot of details. I think maybe words first might be good.
LYRICIST: You know I work better from music first. Please?
COMPOSER: OK. Let me see . . .an opening number. Opening . . . Opening . . .
(THE COMPOSER hums a few notes)
LYRICIST: No, wait. That’s.. I’m sorry, but that’s Cole Porter.
COMPOSER: Oh right. Wow. Hmm...
LYRICIST: OK. All right. What about if it starts with an invocation. Something like... Gods of the theater, smile on us. You who sit up there stern in judgment, Smile on us. You who look down...
COMPOSER: That’s Sondheim.
LYRICIST: Oh. I knew it sounded familiar.
COMPOSER: Identical.
LYRICIST: Fine. Let me think. LCT. LCT...
COMPOSER: Three.
LYRICIST: A new theater ...
COMPOSER: For new writers. Hey . . .
LYRICIST: Yeah. Keep going. Keep free-associating. This could work ... be in the moment...It’s... it’s...
LYRICIST: IT’S A FEELING AND A FLOW
COMPOSER: WALKING IN IT’S...
LYRICIST: I DON’T KNOW. COMPOSER: GRACIOUS. THRILLING. WELCOME. WELCOME. YOU STEP INSIDE THE DOORS SO MUCH HOPE WITHIN THESE WALLS THE SPIRIT SOARS...
I SEE WRITERS IN THE HALLS LAUGHING! SCRIBBLING! DREAMING. PACING. PRAYING! PRAYING! I’M SEEING ACTORS REHEARSING SOMETHING BOLD AND NEW BY SOME YOUNG UNSUNG SOMEONE. CHARACTERS NO ONE’S EVER SEEN BEFORE IN A PLAY THAT MAY BE REMEMBERED! OP’NING NIGHT OP’NING NIGHT AND EVERY SEAT AND EVERY SEAT IS IN DEMAND! IS IN DEMAND! HOW THEY ROAR HOW THEY ROAR AND STAND... AND STAND... AND... AND...
(They run out of ideas for a minute. LYRICIST whips out a brochure. They look at it together.)
COMPOSER: 23,000 square feet, designed by architect Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture.
LYRICIST: LEED Silver certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.
COMPOSER: Suspended above the roof on 16 massive steel and concrete pillars.
LYRICIST: 131 seats.
COMPOSER: AND OF COURSE, THERE ARE WINGS.
LYRICIST: OF COURSE, THERE ARE WINGS . . .
COMPOSER: AND NONE OF THIS... NONE OF THIS... NONE OF THIS SINGS!!! NONE OF THIS SINGS!!!
(They free associate again.)
LYRICIST: Sings.
COMPOSER: Wings.
LYRICIST: Wings.
COMPOSER: Angels!
BOTH: Angels in the wings!!!
AND THE ONES AND THE ONES BEHIND THE SCENES BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE PLANS WITH THE PLANS AND WAYS AND MEANS AND WAYS AND MEANS. PATRONS PATRONS BERNIE GERSTEN André ! André !
OUR ANGELS IN THE WINGS!
ALL THE YEARS OF HOW AND WHY HOW AND WHY FOR THIS THEATER IN THE SKY. FOR THIS THEATER IN THE SKY. MAGIC. DARING. HOPEFUL. TRUTHFUL. BRILLIANT BRILLIANT. THEATER THEATER OR THE ARTISTS FOR THE ARTISTS OF THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE IN THE HERE AND NOW . . . IN THE HERE AND NOW CLAIRE TOW... THE TOW! THE TOW OPENS! OPENS!
The famed architect HUGH HARDY , who passed away in 2017, had a long and fruitful relationship with Lincoln Center Theater. Starting as an assistant to Jo Mielziner in the early 1960s, Hardy had a front row seat to the thrills and pitfalls of the Vivian Beaumont stage. He would continue to leave his mark on Lincoln Center with his design of LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater. Hardy sat for this interview close to twenty years ago, before he began work on the Tow.
The Lincoln Center Architects Group, (left to right)
EDITORS: When did you start work on the Vivian Beaumont Theater?
HUGH HARDY: The early sixties.
ED: What was the working name for the theater?
HH: It was the Repertory Theater. The idea is that it would do repertory of classic American plays, always American. That it was going to be something better than Broadway, different from Broadway—that it would be worthy of the great idea of Lincoln Center. And it was something without precedent in the U.S. of A.
ED: Who came to you first with this idea? Was it Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan?
HH: Well, they were involved. But the Board specifically selected them because they were the best of the era. They happened, ironically, to be the best of Broadway, though they were hired to do something different than that. That’s always been the great contradiction of the place.
ED: What were you doing in the early sixties?
HH: I was working for Jo Mielziner as a scene designer, although I had received
an MFA in architecture. Because I had passed the Scene Design Union exam, I could work as a scene designer.
ED: Were you an architect then?
HH: No. I was stagestruck by Jo Mielziner’s work, which transformed American theater.
ED: And where did you study?
HH: At Princeton, for architecture. I didn’t study theater—I didn’t know anything about theater, but I got through Princeton painting scenery, building scenery, doing lighting and all the stuff you explore as an amateur. And so I knew the theater in that respect—I knew how they physically made it.
ED: And when you finished Princeton what was your first job?
HH: Well, I’d always kept track of Jo. I wrote him a letter, and he wrote back! I was just done in with delight—he was my hero, you know? So we kept up correspondence, and when I was in the Army I would go to Washington and sit there in technical rehearsals while he lit a show. That was pretty exciting. I wasn’t on salary; I was just there having a good time. So I pestered him (laughs), kept after him, and because I was credentialed as a scene designer I could go work in his studio. I worked there with Ming Cho Lee and Will Steven Armstrong. We were all drafting up a storm together. For instance, I drew the hotel for Gypsy. I was slightly embarrassed when people said, “What do you do?” And I’d say, “Oh, I work for a scene designer.” It probably would have sounded better to say, “I’m an architect,” but I wasn’t registered.
So when Jo got the job to design the theaters at Lincoln Center he came to
me and said, “I’ve got a job, I need you.”
Because I was a credentialed architect, not a licensed architect, I understood architecture. He was a scene designer collaborating with the architect Eero Saarinen, but Jo didn’t know the language of architecture. So I was the translator between these two titans. Two people often don’t mean the same thing even when using the same words. They would have these conversations, and I would have to say, “Now Jo, what Eero means is . . . ” (Laughter) And you know, I’m just this kid, so it was gutsy.
ED: So what were they talking about?
HH: About the nature of the theater. Saarinen believed in progress. He was tyrannically obsessed with how things work. And he believed in evolution; he believed that things were getting better. He believed that people used to ride around on horses, and then things got better because they could ride around in cars, and then transportation got better because they could ride around in airplanes—the world was improving. No doubt about it.
ED: And the theater?
HH: And the theater was evolving, too, and Eero believed that what Tyrone Guthrie did in Canada was the future of the theater. Anybody who thought otherwise was wrong. Now, of course in New York (laughs) there was no interest in any of that, and so there was this titanic struggle with Jo holding on to what he knew. But the business about the theater’s shape—proscenium or thrust—was never resolved, you see. In a sense, it was Eero who won. By shaping the Beaumont the way he did, he prejudiced it in favor of the thrust stage.
ED: And was Mielziner angry about that?
HH: Oh yes, all the time, all the time. (Laughter) Jo, however, did finally accept that this was a possibility. And that’s what led to the big turntable and all that machinery that Bernard Gersten has thrown away because it was so rigid. The physical result of all that apparatus had been tyrannical, requiring people to behave in a certain way.
ED: And did they determine where the curtain line was going to be? Was it going to be a drop curtain?
HH: There’s a big proscenium-style curtain line, and the rigging is there for a house curtain. If they want to hang one up, they can.
ED: Wasn’t there a discussion about a single-form stage or a multiform stage? So that, if there was a rep situation, they could use it on a proscenium one night and as a thrust the next?
HH: Yes, the rationale for that was this giant turntable—the idea was that the front seating section would slide underneath the stage. There were two bunches of machinery. One was Jo’s turntable, with a platform on the outside. He was the first one who created this business of platforms moving individually across the stage. By building separate platform stages on winches, you could move scenery laterally. The idea was influenced by film and work with Kazan. They loved this idea of scene dissolves and scrims—that’s the movies. In addition, which is even more amazing, if you had a platform that was the presentation for a proscenium production you needed to store it, and it could move in any direction, so that you could have three productions simultaneously ready to perform in repertory, and that’s why the stage is so huge. Nobody was ever going to perform all over there. It was made for live storage in repertory.
ED: What were your responsibilities?
HH: I was responsible for the initial program—how big are the dressing rooms, how many toilets should you have, where does the greenroom go, and so forth. But, I said, the first question should be, What is the ‘repertory’? But that was never answered. Nobody ever defined what they meant by ‘repertory theater.’ It meant everything to everybody. And so Lincoln Center ended up with this very expensive solution and this really quite weird theater, one which wasn’t a direct expression of any one person. It was a direct expression of the contest between two people.
ED: And was anybody happy with it?
HH: Not the people who used it first. They didn’t know what to do with it. Eero scaled the room to a two-story set, and it looked wonderful. Now, what happens
if you don’t have a two-story set? That was never investigated. And when Joe Papp did some production—I can’t remember now what it was, but it had a big two-story set in the middle—things looked just fine. But, really, nobody knew how to use the place because it had been designed as a compromise. Interestingly, about ten years ago Bernard Gersten did a major alteration on the Beaumont and we lowered and reshaped the volume of that room. It is, I think, much better, because now it doesn’t overwhelm the actors. And they have now learned, which was very brave, that you can have a single person standing on that stage in all that space, with a glorious result. But initially everyone was afraid to try that.
ED: The Beaumont is known for being a tricky house to work in. Why is that?
HH: It really was designed unlike any other theater, and therefore you need to use it unlike any other theater. It isn’t really a proscenium stage, and it isn’t really a thrust stage. It is somewhere in the middle.
ED: Well, Tony Walton, when he designed the set for The House of Blue Leaves, found that the back wall of the set would be the curtain line.
HH: Yes, because that’s where the focus of the room comes from.
ED: Do you think the challenge of the theater itself was responsible for Kazan’s failure?
HH: Yes.
ED: And Whitehead?
HH: In part, yes. But they were also responsible for this strange business of inventing something that didn’t exist in America. Something for which there
Nobody ever defined what they meant by ‘repertory theater.’ It meant everything to everybody.
Coming to terms with scale implies that you have to only use great big things. But it’s not how big things are, it’s the scale of the presentation, the whole mise-en-scène.
was no precedent, something that isn’t Broadway. What measure of theater was there in New York except Broadway? This is before regional theater became so institutionalized and before Off Broadway was taken seriously. So the idea was that we were going to have a new form of American theater, and that we were going to hire the two best Broadway people to do it was odd.
ED: Peter Brook once said, “If you find the true center of that stage at the Beaumont, you’ll make it work. That’s the problem with the theater— nobody knows where the true center of it is.” He changed the space when he did Carmen in the Beaumont. Did the center of the stage ever come up when you were working with Jo?
HH: No.
ED: But the center of the stage is a way of describing where the inevitable heartbeat of the stage is, where the audience’s attention goes.
HH: That isn’t the language of architecture. It is the language of performance. And the form of the theater was really designed by architects, not by theater people.
ED: But would Whitehead and Kazan come in and sit in on meetings?
HH: Oh, they came to everything. They were wonderful. But they were
more observers than participants.
ED: Over the years as you saw productions at the Beaumont, did you have an opinion about which designers solved certain things?
HH: Michael Yeargan’s big painted backdrops in South Pacific are essential to the presentation of the place, and that’s very Mielzineresque.
ED: You’re quoted as saying, “These stages, for instance don’t enhance scenery, they require it. . . . Those suggested fragments of realism, which in another theater would be scenically compelling and evocative, can easily appear paltry and even shabby on the Beaumont’s stage.”
HH: It’s a question of scale. You have to come to terms with the scale of the place, and now designers have. Coming to terms with scale implies that you have to only use great big things. But it’s not how big things are, it’s the scale of the presentation, the whole mise-en-scène.
ED: Did you give up the idea of working in the theater and move over to architecture as a result of working on the Beaumont?
HH: The experience of working with Saarinen caused me to a have a religious conversion. Saarinen did me in. I just thought, Wow, I could be an architect! That’s what I want to do. It was an opportunity to think about something. Jo was completely instinctive. He was amazing. Eero was intellectual. Everything had to have a rationale, had to be quantified. Eero asked Jo, “What is the ideal maximum distance from the audience to the actor in the theater?” Because he wanted to make sure that the Beaumont didn’t get
any deeper, higher, lower, wider, than this magic dimension. Jo didn’t know, had never thought about it, because he worked in existing buildings. And then he decided that it was the last row of the Belasco because Julie Harris was there in The Lark, and her face was so small that he knew that if you could see her face in the last row you were fine. So sixty-five feet was the answer. In England, someone figured out the same thing—the same magic dimension—but they did it scientifically, by measuring sightlines, and they still came up with sixty-five feet.
ED: Was Mielziner disappointed that you left the theater?
HH: Yes, I think he was. Well, he asked me to be his assistant, and run his studio.
ED: Have you seen any particular scenic solutions in the Beaumont over the years that you found interesting?
HH: Well, certainly Bob Crowley’s mirrored floor in The Coast of Utopia for Jack O’Brien was one of the most fascinating recent ideas. That was pretty dazzling.
ED: What advice would you, Hardy the architect, give to Hugh Hardy the designer about working in the Beaumont?
HH: That simpler is better. And that you’ve got to think about the scale of the place in relation to people.
ED: Is that kind of scale a gut instinct, or is it scientific?
HH: No, it’s not scientific. I think if you work there more than once you would learn something about its dimensions.
ED: This theater really is a living organism.
HH: How true. I think because the Beaumont was spawned by a compromise, these two marvelous people didn’t completely recognize that they had made something without precedent. They both got less than what they wanted, and so they didn’t recognize that in the process they had actually made something quite extraordinary.
ED: Do you think it was extraordinary?
HH: Oh, I do. I do. I do. I do. There is no other such place. ▪
CAREY PURCELL
UPSTAIRS D OWNSTAIRS
MY FIRST LINCOLN CENTER THEATER show was The Light in the Piazza. I was a junior in college, and my friends and I took the Chinatown bus from Boston to spend one day in New York. Student rush tickets landed us in the orchestra of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and by the end of the first act I was sobbing rapturous tears. The lush songs, the romantic story, the beautiful theater— it was all too much for a 21-year-old who dreamed of writing about Broadway musicals just like this one.
I’ve shed a few more tears at Lincoln Center Theater since then, in the Beaumont as well as its downstairs neighbor, the Mitzi E. Newhouse, and its upstairs pal the Claire Tow. New York is a city of contradictions and juxtapositions, so it’s no surprise that when the final notes of a soaring love story reverberate in the Beaumont, a gritty drama (Sylvia Khoury’s Power Strip) chronicles a Syrian refugee’s struggles to survive in an overcrowded camp two floors above in the Claire Tow. On Broadway, Anna’s ship sails into Siam, while off, a former convict skins cows at a slaughterhouse (Abe Koogler’s Kill Floor). Both productions inspire tears.
“It’s a kind of beautiful black box space to make stuff,” said Lileana Blain-Cruz of the Claire Tow, where she made her Lincoln Center Theater debut directing Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ soul-searching familial drama War. “Getting a chance to really experiment was exciting. I think it’s kind of like letting playwrights find the uniqueness of their voice.”
That search is taking place in the Claire Tow Theater, home to works programmed by LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater’s initiative to feature emerging artists. Since its founding in 2009, productions by Ayad Akhtar, Young Jean Lee, and Martyna Majok have played to intimate audiences—first at the Duke on 42nd Street, before moving uptown to the Claire Tow in 2012. Led first by Artistic Director Paige Evans and since 2016 by Evan Cabnet, the LCT3 program has brought dozens of new artists to the stage. These writers’ adventurous, daring work has gone on to win Tonys and Pulitzers, challenging and broadening the theater landscape beyond Lincoln Center Theater.
“I owe everything to that run. That started everything,” said Ayad Akhtar, whose first produced play, Disgraced, immediately launched him to literary notoriety after opening at the Claire Tow in 2012.
Disgraced depicts a dinner party gone disastrously wrong as its wellheeled guests engage in a heated discussion of politics and religion—the two topics one should never discuss in polite society. Akhtar’s play places them center stage, forcing audiences to watch and listen—no leaving the room to tend to appetizers or refill a drink.
The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, propelling Akhtar to fame and Disgraced to a Broadway run in 2014. It was the most-produced play of the 2015-16 season, the same time that Akhtar was the most-produced playwright in America.
“It was crazy. I don’t know if that’ll ever happen in my life again, and it was really extraordinary,” said Akhtar, whose play The Who and the What ran at the Claire Tow in 2014, also exploring questions of identity and faith.
It was this success that drove Akhtar to write Junk, chronicling the financial fiascos of the 1980s, and it was Junk that sent him down two flights of stairs to the Vivian Beaumont Theater when it opened in 2017. Akhtar’s work went from an audience of just over 100 seats to just over 1,000.
“What I decided was to take a big risk, and I’d been wanting to write a big play about finance. So I wrote a Shakespearean history about debt financing, and I patterned it on Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 and I had a cast for a company of 17 actors like Shakespeare’s company,” Akhtar said. “It was a big play, and it needed a big space.”
Opening a show about dishonest financial schemes in the midst of a tumultuous political climate was a risk, but André Bishop, Lincoln Center Theater’s producing artistic director, had faith in the play and Akhtar had faith in Bishop.
“He’s the most sophisticated theatergoer who has the most common man reaction as well,” Akhtar said. “He’s able to sort of combine those two things. He’s seen so many plays, and he’s been around so many great writers, and it’s in his bones. Yet at the same time, he’s never lost the capacity to respond to work as if he were just a common man off the street. I don’t think you can do what he did at Lincoln Center Theater without understanding both sides of that equation.”
Akhtar’s next play, McNeal, will explore the timely topic of artificial intelligence when it opens at the Beaumont in 2024. While his writing explores divisive topics, he says the exploration of those topics is what brings people together.
“What’s special about the theater is that when you gather a group of people together, inherently, something of a
group consciousness comes into being,” Akhtar said. “There is a group experience, and it’s a group experience that transcends the individual. The individuals, invariably—whether they accept it or not, whether they know it or not—are informed and affected by the group.”
That shared experience was the mission of We’re Gonna Die, Young Jean Lee’s exploration of grief and pain that played the Claire Tow in 2014. Lee, an experimental playwright, director, and filmmaker, self-proclaimed weirdo, moved her series of monologues and songs, performed with her band Future Wife, to the Upper West Side following a run at Joe’s Pub downtown.
“It was kind of like the hip space,” Lee said of the Claire Tow. “I felt like that show was meant for those types of spaces—the kind of smaller, edgy, or more adventurous venue at a larger institution. So it felt like the Claire Tow was perfect for that show.”
Inspired by the death of Lee’s father, We’re Gonna Die guides audiences through painful moments from Lee’s past while offering a sense of community among personal grief. Concluding with an audience singalong, the show was a unique addition to Lincoln Center Theater’s lineup— and it sold out in thirty minutes.
“We wanted to make [the audience] cry, make them think about death for an hour, and make people uncomfortable,” Lee said. “It was really trying to get down into the harder emotions and also to destroy preconceptions . . . For
a lot of people that was an incredibly edgy show, because every story was depressing. There was not a single uplifting story in that whole thing. It was just unrelenting.”
Known for art that defies categorization while pushing audiences beyond their comfort zones, Lee was the first Asian-American woman produced on Broadway when Straight White Men opened in 2018. Her current focus is on increasing attention on Korean American representation of actors and stories.
“I still think that there’s a lot of difficulty with Asian American narratives, because Asian American actors have been marginalized for so long,” she said. “There’s a real scarcity of people who have had sufficient experience and I think that is such a big challenge . . . It is so hard to get narratives through the system.”
The intimacy of the Claire Tow encouraged a new kind of exchange when Freestyle Love Supreme performed there in 2014. Founded by Anthony Veneziale and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the improvisational hip-hop group came together to welcome more diversity into the improv community, which until then had been largely composed of white people.
“I think our show is both like a mirror and a window,” Veneziale said. Working off of prompts from the audience, the performers spontaneously create raps, songs or skits. “People get to tell us the things that are on their mind—that’s the window part. And then we get to sort of mirror back what we heard from them and how we take that to inspire each new song. They kind of get to see themselves reflected back in what it was they shouted through the window.”
The opening of that window introduced a new audience to Freestyle Love Supreme, and it also brought the validation that came with performing at Lincoln Center Theater.
“Anytime you do something with Lincoln Center Theater, there’s a bit of a stamp of approval, or at least something that says, ‘We curated this
experience in our facility.’ For me, that’s a dream I didn’t think I could have in improv,” Veneziale said. “We’re typically in basements, or in back rooms, way below 34th Street, and you’re lucky if 10 friends show up. If Lincoln Center Theater says, ‘Hey, this has value and we’re willing to put it into programming that we share with our patrons, who are in essence, the lifeblood of the theatergoing community in New York,’ it carries a lot of weight with it.”
Producing new works is always a risk, whether in a basement or on Broadway, and that risk has increased following the pandemic and industry shutdown. As theater rebuilds its audiences, support for the arts—and new work—is more vital than ever.
“The sense of competence in the sense of being at home at Lincoln Center Theater, feeling supported—it takes care of the shows that are happening inside of its walls,” Blain-Cruz said. “As a director, that sense of focus, that sense of ability to share an idea and feel the whole team or whole building trying to realize it, is a wonderful support.”
That care enables artists to experiment, especially emerging artists in early stages of their career. Blain-Cruz first directed War in 2016 and has since
directed in the Mitzi Newhouse and the Vivian Beaumont theaters. She was named a resident director in 2020.
“I think for directors who are starting out and are consistently looking for places that are going to give you a chance, having the Claire Tow is in some ways a signal that there’s a space at Lincoln Center Theater for people who haven’t had a chance before to kind of work at scale in New York City,” Blain-Cruz said. “It feels like a lovely incubator. It’s a chance to be uptown and still making some weird things I find delightful.”
It’s working at that scale that enables people to see how a story comes to life and how an audience reacts—in short, what works and what doesn’t.
“I think that there’s such a pressure now on artists,” Blain-Cruz said. “Where’s the room for the messiness? Where’s the room for the ‘failure’? It’s so hard to put on a production that manages to have enough success at this point. But there has to be something like risk. I think that there has to be a way in which we have to get people excited about the unknown of new work.”
During times of uncertainty, people often seek entertainment that comforts—a new installment in a franchise they love or a familiar story they know
THE
RISK [IN PRODUCING NEW WORKS] HAS INCREASED FOLLOWING THE PANDEMIC AND INDUSTRY SHUTDOWN. AS THEATER REBUILDS ITS AUDIENCES, SUPPORT FOR THE ARTS—AND NEW WORK— IS MORE VITAL THAN EVER.
will end happily—instead of the unknown. Blain-Cruz said she understands that desire but encourages theatergoers to seek out original shows as well.
“Multiple things can coexist at once, but I think a variation is also what will be really thrilling,” BlainCruz said. “Yes, you can go see that if you want that comfort, but yes, you can come out here when you want to be immersed in a world that is completely unfamiliar and that might give a vision of how the world could be.”
For Blain-Cruz, that vision included a four-story slide in the Vivian Beaumont Theater. When directing a revival of The Skin of Our Teeth, Thorton Wilder’s allegorical history of mankind, she embraced the large scale of the theater, filling it with a 15-foot dinosaur puppet and light-up roller coaster as well as the slide.
“I appreciated [André’s] openness to not knowing what it could be,” Blain-Cruz said of creating the production. “I appreciate that he’d be a steady base for the artists to kind of do their leaping into the unknown . . . I felt a kind of freedom to just do what I needed to do and if I had questions about a scene or how someone was reading, I knew I could get a clear and thoughtful answer.”
Bishop, and Lincoln Center Theater, proved to be a steady base for BlainCruz’s vision for the show. When asked if any of the cast or crew rode down the slide during rehearsals, she said, “I was the first one.” ▪
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US THEATER, FAMILY AND FINDING HOME
ON THE CUSP OF MY 22ND BIRTHDAY, a pivotal moment unfolded as I sat in the audience of the Mitzi E. Newhouse at Lincoln Center Theater. Fresh out of undergrad, I was a Chicago native at a significant crossroads: to move to New York City or Los Angeles? This decision would dictate the trajectory of my career in the arts. My visit to New York that summer was a mission to discover if this city could indeed be my new home.
This quest led me to Lincoln Center Theater where I secured a last-minute ticket to 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog, a centerpiece of their LCT3 new works program. It was my inaugural experience at Lincoln Center Theater, and it profoundly shaped my perspective, relationships, and future.
4000 Miles narrates the journey of Leo, a 21year-old man wrestling with life’s uncertainties and his own grief, alongside his grandmother Vera, after a cross-country bike venture. Set against the backdrop of contemporary New York City, the play delves into the complexities of relationships, grief, and intergenerational dynamics, offering a poignant exploration of the human condition. Given that I was at a similar stage as Leo, navigating the complexities of young adulthood, his story resonated deeply with me.
This connection was intensified by my own summer living arrangement. I was spending the season with my 90-year-old grandmother, Nonny, who was recuperating from hip surgery at my parents’ home. As Leo and Vera’s relationship unfolded on stage, I saw reflected in their interactions the deepening bond between Nonny and myself.
Like Leo’s grandmother Vera, Nonny was a fiercely independent woman and no stranger to adversity. As a WWII nurse who migrated alone to Chicago from the East Coast, Nonny had faced life with a kind of brave steadfastness that I had always admired. But that summer, our conversa-
tions, once casual, had grown into rich dialogues bridging generations, filled with her wisdom, and punctuated by her encouragement to seek adventures, to live boldly as she once had. She shared stories I’d never heard, revealing layers of her life that painted a picture of profound bravery and resilience.
The cozy amphitheater-inspired design of the Mitzi became my favorite venue. Its unique configuration fosters a shared yet intimate experience that thrusts the audience right into the heart of the narrative. The play, in its intimate portrayal of cross-generational connection, did more than entertain; it acted as a catalyst for introspection. It underscored the parallels in our lives—Leo’s and mine—each tethered to the grounding influence of our grandmothers.
That night at Lincoln Center Theater, as Leo found his path within the comforting confines of his grandmother’s wisdom, I too found clarity. The decision to make New York my home, to immerse myself in its vibrant theater scene, seemed not just a choice but a calling—a continuation of the adventurous spirit Nonny had nurtured in me. This single evening didn’t just mark a decision to move to New York; it was the beginning of a decade-long journey that shaped my professional life and deepened my appreciation for the transformative power of theater.
Lincoln Center Theater would become much more than a place where I enjoyed performances; less than two years after seeing 4000 Miles, I began working behind the reception desk at the theater. It’s now been ten years, and LCT has become the site of my professional growth as the office manager. Here, I not only learned the
STAFF SHARE MEMORIES OF SHOWS THEY’LL NEVER FORGET ON RETURNING
intricacies of theater management but also the importance of community in the arts—a value that Lincoln Center upholds magnificently.
Lincoln Center Theater, with its commitment to nurturing new works and talents, proved to be an ideal place for both young aspirations and the wisdom of age. It has been a foundational part of my career and personal development, continually inspiring growth and understanding in the arts and beyond.
Reflecting on that night watching 4000 Miles, I see it as more than just a theatrical experience; it held up a mirror to my life at a critical moment. It underscored the importance of family, the value of personal journeys, and the profound impact of theater on life.
In the theater’s shared space, under the soft glow of stage lights, the play helped me understand the value of both the roots of home and the wings I was ready to test. It reminded me that no matter where our journeys take us, our connections—from those threads that bind us to our past to the ones who shape us—are as enduring as the stories we hold dear.
Several years after that summer, Nonny passed away. Her absence as the matriarch left a deep void for my family, yet whenever I walk past the poster for 4000 Miles at work, it’s as if the memory of the play bridges the gap between here and the hereafter. Nonny had always been proud of me, loving me unconditionally and cheering on my adventures, and standing in front of that poster, I feel her encouragement as palpably as ever.
Peter Studlo
IN THE SUMMER OF 2019 , we were alerted that Lincoln Center Theater was to produce Flying Over Sunset, a new musical by the theatrical
luminaries James Lapine, Tom Kitt, and Michael Korie, opening in the Spring of 2020. Of course, James Lapine is a legend—his work changed my life as a young theater person falling down YouTube holes and discovering masterpieces like Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion (I own the DVDs of all the filmed performances). To be even a small part of the legacy of a new James Lapine musical shocked and thrilled (and kind of intimidated) me. I immediately connected to Flying Over Sunset and believed in it from the get-go. I felt (and still do feel) like it was the exact right production that a nonprofit institution like ours should be producing and supporting, especially in a time where musicals like this didn’t (and still don’t) get the chances they deserve. Plus, it would be my first original musical credit on Broadway!
Then, of course, in 2020 the world shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Lincoln Center Theater leadership and the board ensured our productions would be back. I can still recall popping into the building several times over the shutdown and stopping by the Mitzi and the Beaumont to take in the empty theaters, the intact sets still on the stages, and feeling the ghosts of the past and the thrill of what was to come.
Upon LCT’s return to live theater in 2021, I couldn’t keep myself from staying out of the rehearsal room and tech for Flying Over Sunset. I immersed myself as much as I could in the process of watching the cast and creatives breathe life back into this daring new musical. Returning
to work after the pandemic felt like the great community builder. It was a true whole company— cast, crew, creatives, management, and staff— all uniting for one goal: put on a magical and bold piece of theater in the wake of global trauma.
I recall sitting in tech and witnessing Carmen Cusack as Clare Booth Luce sing a riff in the title song she had never sung before—the stage manager called “hold!” and Tom Kitt had her try it again. It stayed in the show and was immortalized on the cast recording. I remember the night the company put in a whole new Act One finale, and I watched choreographer Michelle Dorrance tirelessly work out the opening rhythmic sequence with the company. Ultimately, I think I saw the show 12 times in full (probably more).
A combination of working on a completely new and original musical, written by theater legends, and produced impeccably by a premiere institution left an indelible mark on me. It’s an experience and a production I will not soon forget and will always be proud to have been even a small part of.
Nick Buchholz
LET HOPE NOT BE FORGOT
When you watched Fergie’s performance as King Arthur you can see the weight of Camelot on his shoulders, you can sense the sharpness of his Knights in the form of slight microaggressions— questioning his power as the show progresses, you feel the love he has for Guinevere and the pain that comes with his discovery of her affair with Lancelot. I can’t help but thank Bartlett Sher for having him be the choice of understudy— otherwise, I don’t think I would have been moved enough to write this. Another genius mark for a historic run for one of Broadway’s Golden Age musicals.
DURING CAMELOT ’S STINT at the Vivian Beaumont, I had the pleasure of watching this production four times, each one better than the last. However one performance struck me profoundly: the understudy performance of Fergie Phillipe in the role of King Arthur. This particular performance made me feel so much joy and inspiration—it was unlike any performance I have seen before. As a person of color and a member of Generation Z, I watched the role of King Arthur take on new dimensions when played by a Black actor. During this performance with Fergie at the helm, the audience is shown the story of Arthur, a poor Black child, who found the sword in the stone and became the prophetical King of England. I was reminded of the first election of Barack Obama, and that feeling of hope and possibility. The power of Fergie’s performance made me feel so much empathy towards King Arthur, and a sense of magic drew me in and felt like we’ve come a long way to see this in front of our eyes.
What I took away from Bartlett Sher’s diligently detailed direction was the idea of building a legacy and “fixing” the world for future generations is not something only those in positions of power are capable of; we, the people, are able to as well. King Arthur states in his first scene with Guinevere that, “together we may discover if power can be harnessed as a force of good.” These eloquent words, newly written by Aaron Sorkin, tells us that Arthur believes if we work together we could change the future of our world and its policies.
Barack Obama said, “Hope is not blind optimism . . . hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.” We hold onto the spirit of hope with the belief that things could change if we worked together instead of against each other. We constantly grapple with the idea of what our world could look like and what we leave behind.
Our journey in this life begins with our first step, what we do next is based on our willpower and confidence to move forward. I hope that many more found a sprinkle of what I did during Camelot’s run, and that it spoke to them. I have a lot of faith in the world and the people in it. I hope that one day we will all work together and tread forward to that beautiful idea where we can build our own Camelot.
Christian Clinton
50 STEPS AWAY
IN THE SUMMER OF 1993, on a particularly hot Saturday afternoon, my Mom and I took the trip from Long Island into the city to see a show. We headed directly to the TKTS booth and got in line. I was in charge of picking out what we would see and I couldn’t wait to get to the front of the line to see my choices, but fate intervened. Someone came by flyering the line, and approached us with an offer for twofers (remember twofers?!) for a show called Falsettos. Neither of us was familiar with the show, but being a devotee of Chip Zien and James Lapine from wearing down my VHS copy of the original production of Into the Woods, I approved the selection quickly, we snapped up those twofers, and headed for the Golden Theater box office to redeem them. Luxuriating in the air conditioing, I was feeling that amazing combination of nervous excitement for something new. Once the house lights went down and the show began, my infatuation with the work of one William Finn was ignited. I had never seen anything like Falsettos before, and I was immediately hooked on Finn’s infectious melodies and profound storytelling. Cut to the summer of 1998: I had graduated college and was living in the city, trying to make my way as a stage manager (I later began my career as a publicist in 2001). My longtime friend Josh Rich had recently started working at Lincoln Center Theater and it was a thrill to be able to get in to see shows there; any invitation I received was met with an enthusiastic “yes please!” Imagine my joy when I saw that Lincoln Center Theater was producing a new William Finn musical, A New Brain, and oh my gosh, I was going to get to see
it! I was so grateful to be sitting in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater that night, the familiar feeling of nervous excitement flowing through my veins. Little did I know at that moment that A New Brain would become one of my favorite musicals of all time. It was pure magic for me that night: every song, every performance, every granular moment of that show immediately encoded itself into my DNA. It was one of those shows that sent me out into the street yelling “THEATER!” at the top of my lungs because my emotions were overflowing and my heart bursting. When I decided to pursue theater as a career, this is what I signed up for. Those voices! The sounds of Kristin Chenoweth, Malcolm Gets, Christopher Innvar, Liz Larsen, Michael Mandell, Mary Testa, and Chip Zien felt like lightning traveling through me. William Finn’s story captivated me—I had become emotionally invested in these characters. I felt like I knew them, and I cared about them ferociously. The cast album became, and remains, a daily part of my life. “Change” is one of my go-to shower songs. I leapt at the chance to see the City Center production in 2015. Last summer, I traveled to see the delightful production at Barrington Stage
Company. My devotion to A New Brain knows no bounds. I have continued to enjoy William Finn’s work, but he truly changed my life that night in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and I will be eternally grateful to him and to Lincoln Center Theater for that. Here in the summer of 2024, the universe has aligned itself so that I am somehow privileged enough to now be a part of the fabric of this august institution as a full-time staff member. I walk under the Lincoln Center Theater awning every morning, through the stage door, and down to my office in the back corner of the basement, no more than 50 steps from where I sat that night in 1998. Some days, my heart is too full to handle it.
Juliana Hannett
THEATERGOER
MY MOTHER WAS AN ACTRESS . She had audition wigs, headshots, and a tacklebox filled with stage makeup. She was a single mother, so I often tagged along to her jazz classes, voice lessons, rehearsals for shows on and off Broadway. Whenever she had the chance, she went to the theater, and as far back as I can remember, I sat in the seat by her side.
I grew up watching curtains rise and fall, the swooshing on and off of scenery. I learned to unwrap my pack of cherry Chiclets only when the music swelled and never forget a sweater to combat the chilly A/C.
My mother rarely gasped or sobbed at home, but sometimes she would at a matinee. Clutching her Playbill, she’d well up at the first notes of an overture, and now, without fail, so do I.
When I became a mother, I knew I’d take my daughter, Ella, to the theater the moment she came of age. As it turned out, that age was two, when Lincoln Center Theater mounted a lavish revival of The King and I in 2015.
I didn’t want her to miss the ship that sailed onto the stage or the gaggle of King’s children singing “My cup of tea,” with their pinkies out.
It wasn’t the craziest of ideas to consider taking her so young. Ella was still, with an old soul’s focus. Plus, her nursery songs were more Kander & Ebb than Barney, more “Bobby, Baby” than
“Baby Shark.” Maybe she’d sit through one act or even two if I played it right.
I arranged for seats at the back of the orchestra, an easy escape should she take to kicking the seat in front of her or talking in an outside voice.
As it turned out, she was the perfect patron. I didn’t have to shush her once. She was riveted and I was thrilled.
Planning to leave at the second intermission, I scooped her up and headed for the exit. She pointed back to the house wanting to see the rest of the musical.
I’d like to tell you Ella was hooked on theater from that day forward, that she woke up every morning clamoring for a yogurt squeezy and a Broadway show. She did not. But I kept taking her.
When my daughter turned ten, Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem came to the Mitzi Newhouse. Ella wanted to see it. Her first play.
There’d be no dancing or singing, I told her, only grownups talking about grownup things. Undeterred, we went with my mother one Sunday, and Ella sat between us.
After the performance, I asked her if it was everything she’d hoped for, to which she just shrugged. But soon after, she asked for the poster, something she’d never done before. While Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo placards hang on the bedroom walls of many of her classmates, Ella has one of an Off-Broadway play.
Of course, I’m bragging, but I also feel like my work here is done. I have a good feeling she will go to the theater when she grows up and, should she have children, take them along.
Ella is now eleven. Last week we saw Uncle Vanya. Too soon for a play about dashed potential and the futility of life? Maybe. Two acts in, I was anxious enough to lean in and tell her Chekhov plays are always sad. I’d wanted to shield her from the thought that adulthood held nothing but existential despair.
But really, what would be her take-away, if anything at all?
Then, as the play neared its conclusion, Ella spoke to me in the darkness. “The violin boy loves Sonya,” she said.
There’s so much unrequited love in Vanya, but here was a yearning I’d missed. I looked to the violinist and only then saw what Ella had seen.
“You’re right!” I whispered and squeezed her hand, because someone, at last, loved Sonya, and because, while sucking a grape flavored Tootsie Pop, my daughter had communed with the story with no help from me.
Michelle Metcalf
Lincoln Center Theater’s poster for Becky Nurse of Salem by James McMullan.
The same words come up time and time again when people are asked to describe André Bishop: kind, smart, and humble— the best qualities to have in a leader, and ones that are all too rare. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows André that when asked to write a few words about their friend and colleague Mr. Bishop, every single one of these people, all luminaries of the American theater, responded within minutes with an enthusiastic “ Yes! ” While there are a few pages in this issue dedicated to celebrating André and his legacy, we could have easily filled volumes and volumes—for those who have the honor of knowing him personally, he is cherished beyond words.
André Bishop cares about stories, about living and breathing people, and about inviting the Lincoln Center audiences inside entire worlds. He encouraged me as an artist and supported my vision for the theater. I am forever grateful for his invitation to be a resident director, because it meant the worlds I imagined got to live on some of the most important stages in New York City.
Lileana Blain -Cruz
Few if any artistic directors have shaped modern American theater with the creativity, taste, and passion of André Bishop. At Playwrights Horizons, he shepherded a whole new and groundbreaking generation of writers including Christopher Durang, William Finn, Richard Greenberg, James Lapine, and Wendy Wasserstein. At Lincoln Center Theater, he not only introduced countless other emerging voices to an even wider public but also mounted definitive American premieres of major works by Tom Stoppard and restorative revivals of American classics by Clifford Odets and Rodgers and Hammerstein. And he accomplished all of this with an unflagging kindness and modesty that are rare in our theater. As André steps back from an active producing role, he will be missed as much for his humanity and generosity as for his nearly half-century run of making indelible contributions to the American stage.
FrankRich
One of the great joys of this designer’s life was receiving a phone call from André Bishop offering a new play to design. Aside from his distinctive calm, sonorous telephone voice, and aside from him respectfully offering up a yummy project, it was his really unique skill at distilling what it was that was needed to be done, and why I was the right guy for the job. I always marveled at his skill at putting it all in one sentence. There was no extraneous information, and no usurping the director’s job. It was artistic direction. How you get all that in one sentence, I don’t know. On one difficult show that seemed to be jumping the tracks, I went to his office wavering in doubt. His answer was SIX words, no more. And those six words got me back on track, and the show was a notable success. Artistic direction defined.
JohnLee Beatty
I know what words can mean and it’s hard to put into words what André has meant for me— but I’ll try! Of course, his support of my work is the single most important factor in my finding my footing as a playwright, and yet, his tenure at LCT opened up important vistas for me not just as a theater artist but as a theater lover. His passion for the theater—for plays and playwrights—has enriched our literature and my life immeasurably.
AyadA khtar
The late, great Flora Roberts—my then agent— called me and, in her deep bass-baritone voice, said, “You need to meet with André Bishop. He wants to talk to you.” So I scheduled a meeting with André, and when I walked in, I discovered his voice was just as deep and rich as Flora Roberts’! I took that as a sign! André told me, “If you have an idea, we will help you develop it.” When I heard those words, I had an out-of-body experience. The thought of creating something for Lincoln Center Theater made me float up to the ceiling. And, as it happened, I did actually have something in mind. I thanked him profusely and said I’d get back to him in a few days; I just needed to sort out this idea about a girl in a yellow dress. So I went home and called my good friend John Weidman, and together we created Contact André’s support of that dance-driven piece built around characters longing for connection brought us all very close. To this day, I count him as one of my dearest friends. His sage advice and unwavering encouragement have bolstered me through many a project and many a trying time. His love for the theater is infectious. He treats his artists with respect, emboldening them and allowing them to do their best work. It does not escape me that André hired a woman to create, direct, and choreograph at a time when women were an afterthought as directors in the theater. He has made Lincoln Center Theater a place where anything is possible.
Susan Stroman
I have had the privilege of knowing André Bishop as a cherished colleague and friend for over forty-five years. I met André when he was taking tickets at Playwrights Horizons in 1975 just when it had opened at the former strip joint on what then was the seedy stretch of far west 42nd Street. It was a reading of a play by Wendy Wasserstein. In a very short time thereafter, André was running the theater and producing the works of many young playwrights who would go on to shape the theater of our generation under his leadership. André is one of the few people who runs a theater but is not also a director. His work and taste is driven by
his respect for the written word. He understands that successful theater productions begin on the page. As an artistic director, André has not sought the spotlight. In my opinion, his contributions have not been sufficiently recognized in the press. André Bishop has left an indelible mark on the theater. He has won the love and respect of all the accomplished theater artists who have been lucky enough to have worked with him.
And for those of us who also call André our personal friend, our lives have been doubly blessed.
JamesLapine
Dear André,
Working at Lincoln Center Theater elevated me, made me feel for the time I was there (though not long enough) like an artist. I am indebted to you for bringing me to LCT. I will miss you. We all will miss you. Just knowing you were upstairs in your office was enough to make me feel that I was in the best creative hands.
All my love.
Patti LuPone
As you all well know, André is a total maniac. We’ve spent so many crazy nights together drinking and partying until all hours, and he likes to party hard, it’s difficult to recall how we even met. It might have been a Grateful Dead concert but . . . oh, no, hold on, sorry, wait a minute, I was thinking of André the Giant. HE could party. André Bishop is a whole other matter. And not quite as tall. Seriously, I’ve had the great pleasure of working at Lincoln Center a few times over the years. First in Richard Nelson’s Some Americans Abroad when it moved upstairs to the Vivian Beaumont, then in 2004 with the new adaptation of The Frogs with Sondheim and Susan Stroman, and finally in 2013 in Douglas Carter Beane’s The Nance directed by Jack O’Brien. All three were thrilling, challenging, and immensely gratifying
experiences, and the amazing man behind the latter two of those diverse productions was the one and only André Bishop. I was well-aware of his extremely successful and heralded tenure as artistic director at Playwrights Horizons but never had the opportunity to work with him back then. And I would be remiss not to mention his producing partner, the late great Bernie Gersten, whose legendary career at the Public with Joe Papp was also well known to me, but when they joined forces to run Lincoln Center Theater, they became the perfect team and the perfect producers, the best an actor could ever hope for. And, of course, André has continued that great work since Bernie’s passing. André and Bernie complimented each other so beautifully. Bernie was the warm, effusive cheerleader, your favorite uncle, who underneath it all knew everything there was to know about putting on a show and wanted only for you to do your very best work, and André was the equally incisive, compassionate, and supportive leader, but all expressed in his shy, self-effacing, and witty manner. André would always allow the artists to do their work without interference, but would also always be there, like a brilliant theatrical Yoda, to say just the right thing or ask just the right question when needed to help you find the right path in the journey of your piece. André is, without question, a class act, and an extremely kind and generous soul, and I never once saw him raise his voice or lose his temper. However, during The Frogs I was told he hated a joke in the show with a passion heretofore unseen in our working relationship. It was a throwaway joke written in the style of Burt Shevelove, the original book writer of The Frogs, and was more about rhythm than anything else. Here’s the line that dare not speak its name: Charon, the ancient boatman on the River Styx, says to the god Dionysus that he hasn’t seen any frogs on the river since “the Great Drought of ’42.” Dionysus says, “I don’t remember that drought” and Charon replies, “It wasn’t that great”. Harmless
enough, but apparently André confided he would die of embarrassment if it wasn’t axed. Now, I never expected it to bring the house down, but I also didn’t expect it to drive André to a premature death, especially since we were contending with so much on that production, so I cut it. It didn’t save the show, but I was glad to give André some momentary relief during an intense preview period. André has had an extraordinary run at Lincoln Center Theater of remarkable work and unqualified success and will be a very hard act to follow. I congratulate him on this tremendous achievement and look forward to his next chapter. Thank you, André, not only for your kindness and generosity to me but for so many years of excellence, and for your gentlemanly, astute, and humane example of how to produce great theater.
Well, what do you know?
Turns out he is a giant after all.
NathanLane
While actors may not be quite as complicated as opera singers, André’s 30-plus years at the artistic helm of Lincoln Center Theater makes my 19 years at the Met seem like a relative walk in the park. One of the joys of my tenure has been having André as my wise neighbor and good friend just a stone’s throw across the Plaza, where he has always been available for artistic counsel and collaboration. Now, with André’s glorious artistic work at LCT approaching the finish line, it may be time for him to take a victory lap, but beloved and revered by all, his legacy as a theatrical immortal shall forever endure.
Peter Gelb
I have always felt, not just pleased, but flattered, to have had my work produced by André, first at Playwrights Horizons, then here at Lincoln Center—to have been identified as one of the artists whose work he felt deserved a spot inside the circle of extraordinary artists he had gathered inside his theaters. Take a walk around the building. Slow down when you pass the posters. Ayad Akhtar, Robbie Baitz, Chris Durang,
Tina Howe, J. T. Rogers, and Tom Stoppard. Heady company. Then pause in front of the mural you pass on your way down to the Mitzi or up to the Beaumont. (Jim McMullan!) Here is a vivid, technicolor, tip-of-the-iceberg representation of just a tiny fraction of what André has accomplished since he took the artistic director reins from Greg Mosher over thirty years ago. And there, smack dab in the middle, is the Girl in the Yellow Dress, Deb Yates, still sailing as she has been for twenty-five years through the works of Ahrens and Flaherty, John Guare, Adam Guettel, Sarah Ruhl, and Wendy Wasserstein—just a few of the artists André has made part of his theatrical family. Comparisons are odious, and I have had satisfying relationships with other producers, but nothing that compares to the careerspanning pleasure which has flowed from my thirty-five-year relationship with André Bishop.
I have been lucky, and I know it.
John Weidman
I fell in love with André when I was hired for South Pacific in 2008, but I can’t remember a time I wasn’t in awe of him. Innovatively leading both Playwrights Horizons and Lincoln Center Theater might change a man. But anyone who knows André will tell you that he is among the most humble, kind, witty, gentle geniuses who has ever worked in our business. No matter the strife, no matter the difficulties, André always has a steady hand on the tiller. His strength, integrity and steadfast belief in artists is what drives him and to watch him at work is a thing of beauty. Having the opportunity to become his friend and to reap the rewards of that friendship has been one of the great joys of my career and life. André has been the calm in the middle of the New York City theater cyclone for generations. His experience and accumulated theatrical knowledge are unparalleled. He not only invented the role of the modern day artistic director, but he will forever be the standard by which all others will strive to emulate. The list of emerging artists he’s recognized,
nurtured, and then championed is unparalleled. He is responsible for hundreds of theatrical productions, so many of them premieres, in New York and beyond, and it’s not hyperbole to say that the American Theater would be a much lesser place without his Herculean contributions. As I write this, I can hear André’s mellifluous tones admonishing me, “Now, Danny, you know that’s not true”. But it is. The fact is, his influence cannot be overstated. After his tenure here, I pray André continues to counsel artists with his unique sense of class, taste, and brilliance for as long as he so desires. His breadth of theatrical knowledge is a treasure trove and anyone wanting to produce or create theater should seek his guidance in every aspect. I know I will.
I love you, André. And I’m still in awe.
Danny Burstein
There are theater lovers. There are theater makers. And then there’s André Bishop. How lucky have we all been to have André in our lives. Ever since we met in the late ‘70s when he produced Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, André has been the rock, the guiding light, and the reason plays get done. Wise, passionate, and the greatest friend to the playwright imaginable, André brings theater makers together, gives them space and guidance, and trusts them. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your trust and for your friendship. Lincoln Center Theater has been so fortunate to have you at its artistic helm. I’m sure the theater treasures everything you’ve done to make it what it is today.
I certainly treasure our friendship.
Bravo, André.
Jerry Z aks
An Ideal Companion
WONDERFUL DAYS! In the fall of 1986, under the passionate and imaginative direction of Gregory Mosher and Bernard Gersten, Lincoln Center Theater would open their second season with Woza Africa!, a month-long festival of new South African plays, written, acted, and directed by South Africans, exploring the grim realities of silenced freedoms under the oppression of apartheid.
“Woza” is a Zulu word, meaning “rise up!” You can’t imagine the planning and expense and daring it took for Lincoln Center Theater to present these five revolutionary plays from a nation where apartheid would not end for another five years. The New York Times announced the coming event in July 1986.
The festival opened September 10, 1986 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.
These men and women had so much to say. Gregory wanted New York to meet Mbongeni Ngema and Percy Mtwa— these stars from “the belly of the beast.” Gregory assembled a panel of the South Africans to tell us about their lives, shining a light on a largely previously ignored theatrical world.
Gregory approached The New York Times about running a major piece on the people of Woza Africa! bringing their work to America. The Times demurred, saying they already covered South Africa, namely, in celebrating the work of Athol Fugard, universally regarded as South Africa’s greatest living playwright. Gregory pointed out that as vital as Fugard was, South Africa had a far richer and more complex vibrancy than one white man’s voice. The Times did not change their mind.
But how to cover this event?
The evening featured such stars as Mbongeni Ngame whose Sarafina! was the hit of the festival, transferring to Broadway. The event came off brilliantly in the winter of 1987.
Gregory asked me to record what these artists had to say, edit it, and print it. Lincoln Center Theater would distribute it to its members.
And that is how the Lincoln Center Theater Review was born.
Anne Cattaneo, LCT’s newly appointed dramaturg, joined me as co-editor in 1988 for our fourth issue, for the production of Playboy of the West Indies by Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura. We went on to publish more than seventy issues over the next 35 years.
We’ve always thought the Review had one simple mission: to act as the ideal companion you’d want to go to the theater with, that voice who can best illuminate the issues generated by the play you’ve just seen.
Over the years, those ideal companions have included the likes of Margaret Atwood, Laurie Colwin, Joan Didion, Jenny Egan, Richard Howard, George Packer, and Tom Stoppard. My favorite piece explored how King Lear could have avoided all that pain and anguish and turmoil of dividing up his kingdom if he’d only had the sense to hire a good estate lawyer like Ron Carroll to draw up a watertight last will and testament.
Anne retired as dramaturg in February 2022. We passed the editorial baton on to her eminent successor, Jenna Clark Embrey, who has now overseen four issues. Uncle Vanya was the 80th issue, what you hold in your hands now, dear reader, is the 81st.
Thank you, Lincoln Center Theater and André Bishop. We never imagined the Review entering its fifth decade. I can only echo the word of our first issue: Woza!
Carry on!
John Guare
WHY WERE
YOU PLAYING THE VICTIM?”
an eleventh grader from Manhattan’s High School for Fashion Industries named Cameron asked Anika Noni Rose. The rest of the kids in the audience clapped and cheered because they clearly wanted to know, too. The curtain had just come down to thunderous applause after a matinee of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya for nine hundred and ten New York City public high school students in the Beaumont Theater. Ms. Rose, who played Elena in Lincoln Center Theater’s production, had just taken her bows. Now, she was back onstage with her fellow cast members, in her own sweatpants and baseball cap, for a post-show talkback with the student audience. The houselights were on. The actors settled into chairs placed by a stagehand and passed a single microphone among themselves to answer the students’ questions. It was clear that they were no longer in character. And yet the students weren’t done with the story. They wanted to know what Elena was thinking, beyond the words that Chekhov had given her, as she found herself caught between her marriage to the much older Professor and her passion for the idealistic Doctor Astrov.
Ms. Rose leapt to Elena’s defense. She explained, “Elena was a victim in many ways. She’s in a situation that she didn’t expect to be in. She married a man she loved, and her life turned out very differently. She’s in a situation that is now untenable, and she has a choice: she can stick with a situation that is dead, or she can leave and be with this man who she has a lot of passion for, or she can choose herself.”
Logically, Cameron and the other students knew this was a play. And yet, they remained immersed in the story: one foot in the imagined world of Uncle Vanya, and the other in the real world of the Beaumont on a Wednesday afternoon.
In my twenty-one years running the education department at LCT, I have sat through almost a hundred student
matinees. Every single time the lights fade to black at the top of these shows, the student audience lets out a scream, as if they’ve just been buckled into a roller coaster. And in a way they have. Collectively, they’re being plunged into an imaginary world and into the unknown, both in terms of the story and the experience of being in a theater.
Sean Chapel, an English teacher at Pelham Preparatory Academy in the Bronx and a longtime participant in LCT’s education programs, explained that he shepherds his students onto the #2 train for the 55-minute journey from his school to LCT twice a year so they can enjoy the total experience of coming to Lincoln Center. It starts with what they know: an afternoon off from school and a trip to an iconic New York City location. But it ends up being a journey of discovery: a performance with amazing actors that feels surprising, relevant, and emotionally resonant. Chapel listed some of what he believes to be our birthright as New Yorkers: “You’ve got to eat a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s. You never go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. You walk by the Empire State Building but you don’t go up. And you go to the theater. I want my students to be steeped in this New York tradition. Being from the Bronx, it can sometimes feel far away for them. It’s incumbent upon us as educators to cultivate a new generation of theatergoers. And then, one day, when they grow up, they’ll take their children.”
About thirty percent of the students that we bring to see our shows have never seen a professional production before. Eighty-one percent of our students live in poverty; ninety percent are students of color; and about a quarter of them are recent immigrants who are still learning English. Sometimes, students find that their identities and lived experience are affirmed by our shows. At other times, students find themselves getting to know and care deeply about characters across great divides of culture, time, and place.
Everyone loves a good story, welltold. In the education department, we
A JOURNEY OF DISC O VERY
believe that knowing the story and context of a piece before coming to see it and grappling with the same questions that the artists asked themselves during the design and rehearsal process allows our students to come to the theater with a sense of intellectual and artistic ownership. Having accessed their own artistry and imagination in the classroom, they
can appreciate the storytelling in the theater in a deeper way.
Students’ willingness to dive into a story or engage meaningfully with a character doesn’t require the grandeur of the Beaumont, the brilliance of a professional actor like Anika Noni Rose, or even a spectacular onstage rain effect like the one that Mimi Lien included in her set design for Uncle Vanya. In our work in schools, the classroom becomes a theatrical space. This work is led by LCT’s teaching artists, highly experienced educators who are also professional actors, playwrights, or musical theater lyricists or composers. Teaching artists juggle their work in the classroom with their lives as working theater professionals, drawing upon both their artistic and pedagogical skills to engage students in critical thinking and creative problem-solving.
In a post-show workshop following the all-student matinee of Uncle Vanya, Cameron, the eleventh grader who wanted to know more about Elena’s choices in the talkback, got to keep puzzling them through in an improvised in-class activity. This time, LCT’s teaching
artist pretended to be Elena. Cameron, and all the other students in our program, assumed the role of Elena’s college friends, invented characters who don’t appear anywhere in Chekhov’s text but who might have feelings about what Elena decides to do. Within that dramatic framework, students gave the character improvised advice on whether to stay in her marriage or return to Doctor Astrov. The teaching artist’s job was to draw upon Elena’s given circumstances and the students’ own ideas to problematize her choices.
The bridge between experience and imagination is particularly poignant in LCT’s Learning English and Drama Project (LEAD), an in-school program that works with multilingual learners, mostly recent immigrants in New York City’s public middle and high schools who are still learning English while also navigating a new culture and school system. In LEAD, students act out texts they are reading in English class that have been adapted and dramatized by us with their language proficiency level in mind. These texts can be pretty much anything: the comic book Ms. Marvel, Malala Yousefzai’s memoir, or an existing play like A Raisin in the Sun, among many others. LEAD scripts are rehearsed over ten class sessions under the guidance of our teaching artists. They’re performed informally, often in the classroom but sometimes in a library or auditorium, to an audience of fellow students or a few teachers. The structure of the script and the conventions of theater—rehearsal, character work, improvisation, artistic collaboration, physical and vocal expression—allow nervous speakers to gain confidence in their new language.
One day not long ago, a LEAD student at Emma Lazarus High School for English Language Scholars came into class extra early to consult with LaTonya Borsay, one of LCT’s longtime teaching artists. He was playing the monster in his class’s fifteen-page dramatization of Frankenstein and he felt his entrance in a key scene wasn’t right. In fact, the moment had troubled him since the previous LEAD class, several days before.
In LaTonya’s words, “he was supposed to come in hot” in the scene and confront his maker, Doctor Frankenstein. The student felt the staging, a long cross across the width of the classroom before saying his first line, made it hard for him to launch into the emotional intensity that the top of the scene required. So, he took ownership of the situation and pitched an alternate entrance to LaTonya, which upped the emotional stakes for his character and helped the dramatic moment click into place for him. In LEAD, as in all our education work, students don’t just follow a script, they develop their own artistic ideas and learn to act on their creative impulses. So, when you’re Frankenstein’s monster and your entrance feels off, it creates a powerful incentive to communicate your creative ideas in your new language.
LCT has worked with many of its forty-four school partners for more than ten years. As these partnerships have evolved, we’ve sometimes found ourselves doing multiple programs in the same school. So, in a happy accident, just a week after coming to see Uncle Vanya and confronting Anika Noni Rose about Elena in the post-show talkback, Cameron, that eleventh grader from the High School for Fashion Industries, returned to LCT’s Tow Theater to hear a song he co-wrote in our Songwriting in the Schools Program performed by a company of six Broadway professionals. In one week, Cameron got to applaud Chekhov’s work in the Beaumont and have his own creative work, and that of his classmates, applauded upstairs in the Tow.
Whatever path our students find themselves on in life, I hope they will hold on to the joy they found in seeing our shows, working on scenes with their classmates, analyzing the language of a script, or writing an original song. And I hope they’ll remember LCT as a place to encounter characters and stories they can feel passionate about and that they will return for more. ▪
(Above) Cameron, an eleventh grader from the High School for Fashion Industries. Photograph by Kati Koerner.
SECRET LIFE F
TOM STOPPARD
YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT writing a three-hour play unless you’re passionate about it. Or an eight-hour play. You don’t set out thinking, “Can I pull this off?” It only turns out to be eight hours because you’re passionate about it. Any writer will tell you this. I think every play I’ve written has come from several places simultaneously. That’s the point for me. They aren’t just plays that come out of one thought; they connect with others. However, in the case of The Coast of Utopia, I can remember one of the roots. Usually, I forget everything, but when I was in Czechoslovakia in 1977, everything was pretty tough. Many writers, artists, and actors were living twilight lives, unable to work. When I returned in 1990 after the fall of Communism, I noticed an irony in the huge political change. Before, things were published at some risk, receiving intense attention. People took note of the underground circulation of literature. But in the 1990s, there were suddenly a hundred literary magazines, and it was hard to get anyone’s attention. I was reminded of this when I came across the name of Vissarion Belinsky, one of the main characters in The Coast of Utopia. A similar, parallel thesis came to mind.
Belinsky was constantly in danger of being arrested. He had to write carefully and couldn’t publish what he wanted. But he preferred living under czarist despotism to the freefor-all beer garden of Paris in the 1840s. In Paris, so much was churned out daily that few writers and artists managed to be heard above the din. Belinsky liked being back home in St. Petersburg, where students would
come early to the café to see if the magazine was in, read between the lines, and discuss it for half the night. Belinsky was important in that sense; what he wrote had significance under an oppressive regime, which would have dissipated in a free-for-all marketplace.
I had learned about Belinksy in Isaiah Berlin’s book Russian Thinkers. The central idea in Berlin’s thinking was the impossibility of a society satisfying every idea or philosophical wish list. He knew everything has to give way to something else because otherwise you’re trying to square a circle, and there are always bits left over. You can’t have absolute liberty and absolute equality or absolute justice and absolute mercy. This pluralism obsessed him. He felt this was what emerged out of 150 years of intellectual ferment since the Romantic Age and the Age of Enlightenment. It’s madness to think one ought to write a play about that. Plays are populated by people with husbands, wives, lovers, quarrels, growth, children, and all kinds of events that happen in every family. But I wanted to write a play about this. I was reading Berlin’s book and then got sidetracked by something else, the Bakunin Family. I thought, “God, there’s a play there.”
The Coast of Utopia is by no means a seminar. Or at least, I hope that’s true. It’s true to me. I’m sure that in every audience, some feel the balance is wrong—that it tips towards obsessiveness or a love of history and information for its own sake. Some critics say that too. Of course, there’s more than one view about almost
every work of art, and certainly more than one view of a modern play, and definitely more than one view of this play. But I try to write plays I would like to see. Maybe I’ll amend that—it seems tautological. I try to like the plays I’d like to have written.
Putting The Coast of Utopia on stage was a gargantuan job. Jack O’Brien, who had directed my plays The Invention of Love and Hapgood at Lincoln Center Theater, wanted to do this one. We also brought on Bob Crowley, the scenic designer of both of those plays. I was thrilled about the three of us doing it together. I don’t know how many people were in the rehearsal room on the first day, but I’ve never seen so many people on the first day of a play. It was alarming. But the Lincoln Center Theater run of The Coast of Utopia gave me the chance to do what one should do to every play— step back and change things, add, and take away.
I love theater’s pragmatism. I love working on something alive, needing attention, and capable of going in different directions. That’s the joy for me. It’s a bit frightening that most of the time, you’re represented by 100 pages of text, and what happens to them is in the lap of other people and the gods. But now and again, especially in New York, one returns to a play. It’s an opportunity to do what theater does best: be live for you now at this moment. There’s no reason to simply disinter the previous conception and stand it up on a different stage in a different town. The art is in telling the audience so much and no more at the right moment and in the correct order.
PLAYWRIGHTS
The audience sits with eyes and ears open, while you show and tell. Their response—amusement, boredom, captivation—depends on the quality of the performance and what meets their eyes. In my kind of theater, where text is transmuted into an event, the playwright doles out information. At the beginning of the evening, he has a large sack of information, and by the end, the audience has received its contents.
I love theorizing in these general terms about the art of theater and the art of playwriting, because what I love about it is that it’s a form of fiction for me. It has no reality or truth, these things I say, because when you’re writing a play, none of this is in your head at all. The problem is always, “What do I do now?”
This is the secret life of the playwright: While doing it, you have to maintain this delusion, this fantasy that this is the one which will completely knock them dead. That’s what makes it possible. You think, “Yes, this is it.” Of course, it never stays that way for you, but at least by then, you’ve done it, and you’ve got that to show. ▪
This essay is adapted from a 2007 television interview with Mr. Stoppard.
LATE LAST SPRING, I was in my apartment in Tokyo when I received a phone call from André Bishop. I had been in Japan for most of the last two years, overseeing a television series I’d created. It was the crack of dawn for me, early in the evening for André, who was in his office at Lincoln Center Theater with Jenna Clark Embrey, the dramaturg at LCT. Bartlett Sher was on the line as well, in his cramped office off the Beaumont lobby. I was a few years late on a commission for LCT, but this call was about a different play to be called Corruption, about the Murdoch phone hacking scandal in the UK. I had pages, I knew where I was going, but I was a long way away from a finished script. At Bart’s urging, he and I were proposing I finish the play through a series of workshops at LCT, then open in the Mitzi the following spring. André listened silently as I spoke at length about why I wanted to write the play, about how much I wanted to come back and work at my theatrical home. When I was finished, he asked only one question: could I have it ready for rehearsal at the top of next year? “Yes,” Bart jumped in, “he can.” “Okay, then, let’s do it,” André said. “But, J. T., please have it done on time. Or we’ll have an empty theater.”
Could a playwright ask for anything more from an artistic director? Across seventeen years, over the course of three plays, André has patiently, fiercely championed my work: guiding with the lightest of touches, giving few but always superb notes, and staying handsoff or being hands-on as the moment required.
For our first meeting in 2007, I arrived at our lunch as a bundle of anxiety. I was being commissioned by LCT, the theater I had spent my life attending. What if its storied artistic director didn’t like my ideas? I fumbled out rough thoughts about two different potential plays. When I was done, André nodded. “Well, those both sound wonderful. I just think you should write whatever you want. All I ask is that it be something you think—realistically—would work in the Mitzi.” And that was that.
A few years later, when I gave him my play Blood and Gifts, he allowed London’s National Theater to do it first because they had a slot free before LCT did. As André put it to me, how could he deprive a playwright of the income that a long run at another theater would provide? When we did the American premiere, he strongly suggested I go with Bartlett Sher as my director, telling me that we were an ideal match. How right he was.
Before the run of Blood and Gifts in the Mitzi was over, Bart and I talked to André about our idea for Oslo and he commissioned the play on the spot. Over the seemingly endless years it took me to research and write Oslo, he would patiently prod me now and again, gently inquiring as to whether perhaps the play might be ready soon. When I finally turned in a first draft, André programmed it, then funded a series of weeklong workshops in which Bart and I continued to hone the play. When the first preview of Oslo ran over three-and-a-half hours, his only comment was, “Well it works and no one left at either intermission, but we can’t do that twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays.” As I cut (and cut and cut) through the rehearsal process, he came to performance after performance, occasionally offering a judicious
ANDRÉ LISTENED SILENTLY AS I SPOKE AT LENGTH ABOUT WHY I WANTED TO WRITE THE PLAY, ABOUT HOW MUCH I WANTED TO COME BACK AND WORK AT MY THEATRICAL HOME. WHEN I WAS FINISHED, HE ASKED ONLY ONE QUESTION: COULD I HAVE IT READY FOR REHEARSAL AT THE TOP OF NEXT YEAR? “YES,” BART JUMPED IN, “HE CAN.” “OKAY, THEN, LET’S DO IT,” ANDRÉ SAID.
“BUT, J. T., PLEASE HAVE IT DONE ON TIME. OR WE’LL HAVE AN EMPTY THEATER.”
suggestion but more often simply being there to show his support. When we moved the play to the Beaumont, his only request—“and this is a request, J. T., not a demand”—is that I find a way to trim the play to under three hours. I cut further, but the running time was still tipping over three hours. Then Bart hit upon the idea of eliminating the second intermission and eliding acts two and three. I agreed we should try it, but André was against it. He was adamant that the play needed two intermissions; the author put them in for a reason. He was so concerned for the play that he flew back from vacation in Maine to watch the performance where we tried our grand experiment. We three watched together. When Bart’s bold suggestion clearly worked, he told us he was delighted to be wrong, and went back to Maine.
And now Corruption. This year and last, the process of workshopping and staging the play has been infused with the poignancy of knowing this would be my last time doing a play at LCT along with André. Each meal together discussing the script, each meeting about casting, each note given during previews felt bittersweet. Closing night, as the audience filed out he looked at me. “Well, J. T., thank you, again, for a wonderful play. I’m just sorry I won’t be here to see your final commission.” He smiled. “That will be the one that got away.” There were so many things I wanted to say. So many more thank yous I wanted to give. I smiled back at him. “Of course you’ll get to see it. We’ll sit here in the audience and watch it together.” ▪
EXIT A HUMBLE MAN
INTERVIEW WITH
JENNA CLARK EMBREY
André Bishop
André Bishop, 1981. Photo by Jack Mitchell/ Getty Images; The New York Times article, “Enter a Humble Man”, by David Richards, September 13, 1992.
International Corp.
When one enters André Bishop’s office, there are a few things that immediately jump out. There are hundreds of books lining an entire long wall, and also stacked three or four deep on a coffee table, leaving no table top to be seen. There is a close-to-life-size painting of Polish actress Elżbieta Czyżewska, painted by John Wulp, which is surrounded by 86 coffee mugs, each on their own tidy wall hook. Photographs are everywhere, pinned on a cork-board or framed or just lovingly propped up on one of the aforementioned books. It is only after spending some time in this office that one starts to notice aknowledgements of his achievements tucked away: 15 Tony Awards stuffed into the overflowing bookcase, posters from every single Lincoln Center Theater show neatly stacked by the wall. More than one visitor has averted their gaze to the corner when speaking with André (even the kindliest theater legends can be intimidating), only to find themselves staring at the set model for Sunday in the Park with George—a reminder that it was André who commissioned and produced one of the earliest workshop productions. The office is André personified: smart, sentimental, brimming with love and loyalty, trimmed with keepsakes from one of the greatest theater careers in modern history.
In May of 2024, André sat down with Review Executive Editor Jenna Clark Embrey, on the sofa adjacent to the coffee mug-wall, to discuss his beginnings in the theater, his favorite moments at Lincoln Center Theater, and what he has learned as captain of the ship.
JENNA CLARK EMBREY: Let’s start at the very beginning—what was your first exposure to theater?
ANDRÉ BISHOP: As a kid, my parents tended to take me to musicals rather than plays, though I did see a lot of plays too. My parents believed in exposing me to the best plays in New York, not just children’s shows. At that time, New York theater was predominantly Broadway theater. I was always interested in the theater, even before I attended my first show. My aunt took me to a lot of my early theater experiences. Like many people, the first musical I saw was Peter Pan with Mary Martin on stage at the Winter Garden Theater. My aunt liked to sit in the first row of the theater— I hated it, but she loved it. So we were there in the first row of the orchestra for Peter Pan. And I remember there was one point when Peter Pan was flying, and I saw the stage lighting reflected on the wire. And suddenly I saw two things: I saw the magic of believing in something incredible, like how I believed that these people were flying, and then I also saw how it happened. I’ve always thought that the fact that I saw how it happened has dictated the course of my career, because I became interested not only in just the fantasy of it, but also in the mechanics of it. I choose to think that had we not sat in the front row, and had I not seen the light reflecting
off the wire, then maybe the course of my life would have been completely different.
JCE: And that led you to acting, yes?
AB: Like all young people, I initially wanted to be an actor. I acted in school, wrote plays, directed them, and acted in them. I performed in plays like The School for Scandal and scenes from Tiny Alice. At Harvard, I was president of the Harvard Dramatic Club and performed in Much Ado About Nothing, Angel Street, and an experimental production of Three Sisters influenced by Grotowski. Christopher Durang was a few classes below me, and this production in some ways inspired his play
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, particularly the use of “Here Comes the Sun” at the end. It was an infamous production, but even Frank Rich— who was also a student then—gave it a rave review in the Harvard Crimson
JCE: Durang was one of the first writers you produced at Playwrights Horizons. How did you get your start there?
AB: I had quite a few jobs before joining Playwrights Horizons. I worked as a French tutor, and as a reader for the Book of the Month Club, where I recommended books for inclusion in the club. I was fired from that job when I gave a bad review to Doris Day’s memoir, which went on to be a huge success. I also worked for the record producer Ben Bagley, who produced the “Revisited” series that focused on Broadway artists such as Rodgers & Hart, Jerome Kern, and so on. I worked at the Delacorte Theater in the box office one summer, where I faced irate patrons who couldn’t get into Two Gentlemen of Verona. They threw their picnic baskets at me. Chicken bones rained down on me during those times. I could never figure out how to do what we used to call “rack the tickets” which was organizing them for pickup. I couldn’t find Joe Papp’s tickets because I had racked them under the wrong letter.
After my stint at the box office, I worked for the Department of Cultural Affairs, and a publishing house. Eventually, I found myself at Playwrights Horizons. A friend introduced me to Bob Moss, who was then leading the theater.
I CHOOSE TO THINK THAT HAD WE NOT SAT IN THE FRONT ROW, AND HAD I NOT SEEN THE LIGHT REFLECTINGOFF THE WIRE, THEN MAYBE THE COURSE OF MY LIFE WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
We met, and I expressed my need for a home. Bob welcomed me, suggesting I come and hang out. There wasn’t any money involved, but I accepted the offer. Initially, I sharpened pencils and answered phones. Bob had plans for a theater in Queens, which would showcase old plays and help fund our productions of new works. It was during this time that I discovered a pile of unopened play submissions in Bob’s office. Seeing this, I asked if I could read and provide reports on them. Bob agreed, and he gave me the authority to assess and organize readings of plays, and eventually, he named me the literary manager.
In those days, literary managers weren’t commonplace, and I became close friends with Anne Cattaneo, who
held a similar role at the Phoenix Theater. We were both navigating uncharted territory. As Playwrights Horizons grew, I became more involved in programming and operations. Eventually, Bob approached me, expressing his exhaustion with the theater’s financial struggles. He proposed either closing the theater or handing it over to me to run. Without hesitation, I accepted the latter. I became the artistic director and narrowed the theater’s focus to a select group of writers, including Albert Innaurato, Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, William Finn, and James Lapine. We experienced early successes with productions like March of the Falsettos, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, and The Dining Room.
JCE: Did you have a moment when you realized, hey, I’m really good at reading scripts?
AB: Yes, well, in a way. Because I read scripts as an actor, and therefore the
plays that appealed to me most may not have always been structurally that sound, but I was very attracted to highly performable, highly theatrical material, and I think a lot of that had to do with my early acting. In the old days, you used to see actors sitting outside an audition room, kind of reading the script and mouthing the words, and that’s the way I used to read plays, and to some extent still do. I think that my training as an actor helped me, and I was an English major, I read a lot, I loved reading, I knew how to sort of write stuff, but I’ve always felt, in a way, both here and at Playwrights Horizons, I was more helpful to the director than I was to the playwright.
JCE: Why do you think that is?
AB: Because of that acting training, because I knew that I’d been on the stage, I knew it very well, I knew the mechanics, to go back to Peter Pan and the wire. I knew what was needed in the perform-
ances of the actors, I think.
JCE: Did you ever want to direct?
AB: No. I did direct a bit at schools, but no, I never wanted to direct, because directors are just . . . they’re put upon by everyone, everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to give their opinion as soon as possible and as loudly as possible, and I felt my nerves could not take that. I simply couldn’t remain calm in dealing with the onslaught of opinions that come your way as a director. So I never really wanted to direct, no.
JCE: I decided I didn’t want to be a director because it stressed me out to think about how to get things on and off the stage, that was the thing I couldn’t handle.
AB: Well there you go.
JCE: It has always been common— although it’s becoming somewhat less so—for directors to lead theaters. You’re one of the rare ones that comes from a literary management background. How did you go from running Playwrights Horizons to coming to Lincoln Center Theater?
AB: It wasn’t very complicated, as I recall, and it was certainly much less complicated than it would have been today, because this was in 1991. I was at Playwrights Horizons for 15 years, five as literary manager, and 10 as the artistic director. I never thought of leaving, I was forty-something, I was still young, and it never occurred to me that I would leave. But I also never wanted to be there as a white-haired old man, locking up the door 40 years later either. But at that point in 1990 I wasn’t thinking of leaving. It never crossed my mind. I didn’t want to leave New York, because I was born here and raised here, and I never wanted to leave here. Then one day I was at home in my apartment, and the phone rang. It was Bernard Gersten, who was then the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater. I knew Bernie because I had worked in the Delacorte box office for the New York Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1971, and I kept in touch with him, or he kept in touch with me, and I’d see him from time to time. I think
(Above) A framed artwork by playwright Harry Kondoleon; (right) paintings by Clifford Odets and Irving Berlin; (right) one of the shelves of Tony Awards.
[BERNIE] READ ME A LIST OF ABOUT 10 OR 12 NAMES, AND I WOULD SAY, “WELL, YOU KNOW, SHE’D BE GREAT,” OR “HE’D BE GOOD,” OR WHATEVER, AND THEN FINALLY THERE WAS THIS PAUSE. BERNIE WAS AT THE END OF THE LIST, AND HE SAID, “WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT ANDRÉ BISHOP?”
that we all went on a trip to Russia at one point around 1989.
I was quite surprised that Bernie called because it was Saturday morning. He said, “I just want to pick your brain because Gregory is leaving Lincoln Center Theater, and we need to find someone soon, and I have a list of people, and I’d like your responses to this list.” He read me a list of about 10 or 12 names, and I would say, “well, you know, she’d be great,” or “he’d be good,” or whatever, and then finally there was this pause. Bernie was at the end of the list, and he said, “What would you say about André Bishop?”
I was completely taken aback and I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I said, “Well, he might be a sort of interesting choice?” With a big question mark. Then we talked a little bit further, and then that was it. And by that point I had gotten interested. I had one meeting with Bernie, a sort of secret meeting early in the Beaumont, and that was that, I was offered the job.
I never thought I would ever leave Playwrights Horizons quickly, because I loved Playwrights Horizons, I helped build it with Bob Moss and expand it, and it was a beloved place to me, and the people who worked there and the writers we worked with were beloved figures in my life. But I talked to one or two of my friends asking for advice, Wendy Wasserstein being one and
Gerald Gutierrez being another, both of them no longer living, alas. They urged me to do it, and then I just thought, “well, okay.” I had always had a vision that I wanted to do more in the theater than just only produce new American plays, which is what Playwrights Horizons does, and musicals. I really wanted to do classic plays too, and classic musicals, that was very important to me. And although I had never wanted to leave Playwrights Horizons, I also thought that maybe I’d never get a chance like this again, and so I went to Lincoln Center Theater.
JCE: What was programming your first season at Lincoln Center Theater like?
AB: The trick to it was, they wanted me to come not at the end of the season, but in the middle of the season, because I think nothing had been programmed for beyond January. Six Degrees of Separation was still running, but I had to produce something quickly. For the Mitzi I decided to bring Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire with Dan Sullivan directing.
And then the first new show for the Beaumont was Robert E. Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois. I wanted to open my tenure with a show that would really show the Beaumont off. That was a huge, old-fashioned play in three acts with lots of different scenic scenes and a
train that moved at the end towards the back of the Beaumont. Gerry Gutierrez was the perfect director to direct it, and in those days we were allowed to use Juilliard students as the crowd at the end of when Lincoln goes off to Washington to his inauguration. I just wanted to show the play off, and Sam Waterston played the lead, and was wonderful. Gerry was not only a good friend, but he was quite savvy about thrust stages and how to use them, something that I was not, so he was the ideal director.
JCE: Before you arrived here, what was
ANDRÉ BISHOP WITH JENNA CLARK EMBREY
the public perception of the Beaumont like?
AB: The Beaumont had many administrations, starting with Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead, then Jules Irving and Herbert Blau, Richmond Crinkley, Joe Papp—none of these administrations lasted exceedingly long. The Beaumont went dark for a period.
There was a lot of public discussion about what to do with this dark building. There were many reasons it hadn’t worked, one of which was the obvious one: unlike all the other constituents up here who had existed prior to Lincoln Center—the City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, the City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, etc.—there was no Lincoln Center theater company. They built the building and then tried to find a company as opposed to having the company and building the building for them. That was the mistake, I think, made originally, and I think that’s why it became a matter of great concern to the City of New York because this place had been dark and empty.
It was during Richmond Crinkley’s era that the Board met a lot and was planning to convert the Beaumont into a proscenium house, because the feeling was that the theater didn’t work, couldn’t work, would never work.
However, Gregory Mosher and Bernie came in and made it work for the first time. They didn’t have a lot of money to begin with, but they were very smart.
JCE: Are there any shows at Lincoln Center that you were a little worried about how they would work, architecturally speaking, that ended up working beautifully and surprising you in that way?
AB: Well, I was curious as to how the big musicals would show up, because big classic musicals such as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and My Fair Lady are not usually done in thrust theaters. One wonderful thing that happened was that the Beaumont had been built to convert itself into a proscenium house as well as a thrust, and there was all this mechanics underneath the stage of the Beaumont: elevators and lifts that could, at the push of a button, change
the configuration from thrust to proscenium. Well, that never worked. I think they tried it once and then all the machinery got stuck and they just left it there. And I can’t remember who thought of it, it was probably Bernie, thought, “Why don’t we clear out all this junk, all this metal and stuff under the stage and make an orchestra pit out of it?” So we did!
JCE: Is that why we don’t have a permanent deck in the Beaumont?
AB: Yes, partly. And also, the height of decks and the width of decks and the curve of decks all change according to the design.
I was concerned about that, and we solved it very well in Carousel, which was a wonderful production that came from the National Theatre in London, though we had an American cast. We
didn’t do very many living room plays in the Beaumont, but we started all the living room plays, such as The Sisters Rosensweig, in the Mitzi. The Mitzi is easier to handle in a way because it’s smaller, but it is harder be cause of the limited space, no depth under the stage at all, and limited wing space compared to the Beaumont. So I was concerned about what The Sisters Rosensweig would look like in the Beaumont, we had John Lee Beatty, who is a master designer, and we figured it out.
JCE: What kind of advice do you give directors when they’re working in the Mitzi and the Beaumont for the first time?
AB: Well, the advice I give, especially in the Beaumont, is not to be afraid of the space. To realize that going left and going right is effective, but going up and going down is even more effective, and
not to be afraid about going upstage. Figuring out how to stage the play that the sight lines are good for all seats. Bartlett Sher always says this: one of the things you have to do in a thrust stage, whether it’s the Beaumont or the Mitzi, is you have to keep the actors moving more than you would in a proscenium space. And you have to justify those moves, they can’t just be “oh, the actor decides to wander around.” And that’s more difficult, because why does the actor make a tour of the downstage area and end up back on the other side of the stage? How can you motivate that psychologically or dramatically that it isn’t just an actor wandering about so both sides of the thrust can see him, so that the audience can see him?
I give advice like that, and I give very big advice about the need to push it out there vocally.
JCE: I feel like our theaters demand a certain high level of understanding of the offstage architecture of the set—what rooms are where, even when you can’t see them—because there are so many more entrances and exits than in a proscenium.
AB: Yes! We have vomitoriums here that we don’t always use, but we use them more often than we don’t. And you can make downstage exits off the deck, you can go off the stage, which on most Broadway stages, unless they put steps
and you go into the house, you can’t do. And voms are very effective, because you’ve got four to six entrances and exits as opposed to four or two.
JCE: If you had a magic wand or a time machine, what are the shows from your time at Lincoln Center that you would like to go back and watch again?
AB: Well, many of them, but I guess South Pacific would be one, that is my favorite musical.
JCE: It’s my favorite musical too!
AB: Oh, is it?
JCE: Yes.
AB: Well, you know, we did a superb production of it. People always think we do these old musicals to make money, and nothing could be further from the truth. We do these old musicals because I love old musicals. But also, everyone told me not to do South Pacific.
JCE: Really? Why?
AB: Oh, “that old show” and “the book is creaky” and this and that and the other thing. And I felt that that wasn’t true. And I knew that Bart could tell a story, and South Pacific is a lot of story. That’s what won us the rights when I went to Ted Chapin, who was head of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. So I would like to see that again. I was happy when we did that.
I would want to go back and see The Coast of Utopia again because I didn’t see it enough times, really. And
those marathon days . . . we thought they would be disasters. They were the biggest sellers that we had. The production was magical. Oh, there’s many shows with many great performances. But I do have one regret about my time here.
JCE: What’s that?
AB: The one regret I have leaving Lincoln Center Theater is that I had always wanted to start a repertory company here. And I talked about it very heavily with director Gerald Gutierrez when he was alive, and then with Jack O’Brien. Those two men came with great knowledge of repertory, Gerry with The Acting Company and Jack with the APA Repertory Company.
Gerry and I had this idea because repertory would be very difficult to get first rate actors to commit to that length of time. So we thought we would try and have a company that would gather together for a year every three years. So if this actor or that actor would commit to one season every three years, we might have a chance of getting a first rate company and to do a bunch of plays in the Mitzi and the Beaumont in rep. But it proved to be difficult and expensive that I didn’t push hard enough for it. I don’t know if it would have ever happened, but I wanted to restore the Repertory Company of Lincoln Center as it had been called, Iwanted to do that and I never did. The trade-off was I pushed very hard for LCT3 and for a new theater, a third theater, and that happened. I guess you can’t get everything.
JCE: When did the idea of LCT3 first come to you?
AB: Well, I’d forgotten this, but I looked it up a couple of years ago and I realized that in my first contract, the very first contract I had here in 1991, one of the things I asked for was a black box theater—a third theater to produce young writers in. And this was a very short contract. I’m sure these days they are pages and pages long, but mine was about a page and a half. And the board said they would use their best efforts to see about building this black box theater.
ANDRÉ BISHOP WITH JENNA CLARK EMBREY
Then I got busy. I had a lot to learn when I came here. There was a lot I did not know and had it not been for Bernie, I don’t know how I would have survived because I came from a small proscenium theater to a huge thrust stage. I was ready for it and yet I wasn’t ready for it. Anyway, I just forgot about the black box theater thing for years. I was too busy doing this and that and discovering this and we were doing that. And then there was a bad year—I think Wendy had just died—and one day, I was sitting on this sofa, where you’re sitting now, and I was thinking about how we had lost this family of artists that had either been here, or I had brought here. Either we had lost them to television, or to illness, or to death. I was trying to plan the rest of the season and I couldn’t think of
anything to do because my colleagues, the pillars of my artistic life, were no longer here. That’s when I thought, “well, how do we bring more artists in? How do we do it?”
We had a very robust reading program and workshop program, there was no need to expand that, especially since every theater in the world does readings now. One thing I strongly believe is that what writers really need are productions. And at that point I’d forgotten about my contract demand for a black box theater, and I realized that I didn’t actually want a black box. I wanted a small professional theater where plays would be produced and we would get good actors, perform for audiences, charge money, and be reviewed. My thought was that even-
tually the writers and directors and designers from this small theater would filter into the Mitzi and the Beaumont. We’d find a new generation of artistic pillars. So we talked and talked about it, and the Board supported the idea, and in about 2008 we started this program with performances at the Duke Theater down on 42nd Street. The Board felt wisely, “let’s see if the program works before we start building anything.” And then it did work.
We started planning for a new theater, and we knew it had to be here, on campus, not downtown or far away. We wanted all of our artists to be together in one place. But the question became, “where?” Because this building, though it’s huge, didn’t have a lot of space to give. Then someone, I don’t remember who, had the brilliant idea of building on the roof. But the roof was not built to be built on. Thankfully, we found Hugh Hardy and his firm, The Architect, and we started raising money and having endless meetings about what would become known as LCT3. We had to persuade a lot of people, the community board and so on. But Hugh was an immense help because he had actually worked on the initial building of the theater! He had been the go-between between Jo Mielziner, the famous set designer who designed the theater’s interior, and Eero Saarinen, who designed the exterior. And Saarinen and Mielziner hated each other, so Hugh became sort of the mollifier and translator and peacekeeper. So with him designing LCT3, he was very comforting to all the people who were worrying, “will this work? Will this be okay?” We raised the money, we built the theater, and in 2012, we opened the Claire Tow.
JCE: What makes something a Lincoln Center Theater show?
AB: Well, I don’t think about it that much. I think about it because I have to, architecturally. I have to think about whether this play is suitable for a thrust stage. To pretend that that doesn’t come into anyone’s thinking is wrong, because you have to think about it. There are certain plays that don’t work that well in thrust, and certain plays that work better
ANDRÉ BISHOP WITH JENNA CLARK EMBREY
THIS COUNTRY DOES NOT SUBSIDIZE THE ARTS. THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT SUBSIDIZE THE ARTS. . . . NOW WE ARE ALL, AS NONPROFIT INSTITUTIONS, NOT JUST THEATERS, OBSESSED WITH MONEY, THE BOTTOM LINE, AND “HOW WE CAN MAKE IT THROUGH THE YEAR?” THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. IT DOESN’T HELP YOU.
in thrust, or can be more effective in thrust, because the audience isn’t as far away as they are in proscenium houses, or big proscenium houses. I’ve always believed—even though it’s no longer considered proper, I suppose, or fashionable—that picking plays or producing plays is simply the intelligent exercise of one’s own taste. I’ve always felt if I liked something and responded to it emotionally, or intellectually, or both, that others, if we did it well, would feel the same way.
Now, that obviously has not always been true, either because I was wrong, or the production wasn’t good enough, or whatever. And it’s only been in the past 10 years that I’ve begun to think more clearly about social responsibility, plays that can inform your feelings about the world a little more.
In my early days at Playwrights Horizons, and here, what attracted me was the idiosyncrasy and the distinctiveness of the author and the author’s language. That’s what I responded to. I think my tastes have broadened since, in all the years I’ve been here, and I’m interested in a wider variety of plays than I used to be, I think. I think I’ve grown in my job.
JCE: Looking back over all these years of being an artistic director, what has surprised you?
AB: Well, what surprised me was that even after many years, I still felt I had much to learn. Things would happen, good things or bad things, that even after many years of working, I was completely unprepared for. That was one
thing that has really stuck with me. I have realized that you never have all the answers, either intellectually or emotionally, and that has surprised me.
Another thing that has surprised me is that the whole climate of the New York Theater has changed. It went from nonprofit theaters being an alternative to the commercial theater—and those words, “alternative to the commercial theater,” were in the initial mission statement of Playwrights Horizons, because it said that Playwrights Horizons exists for the development and production of new American work by playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and for the production of their work as an alternative to the commercial theater. Well, that, of course, is completely gone now, and many nonprofit theaters are used as sounding boards for commercial productions and take commercial money and
enhancement money, and unfortunately, many people in the theater and on the outside of the theater think success has to do with how many plays move to Broadway. I was surprised that that has happened so quickly in my lifetime, because when I came in and when we started Playwrights Horizons, you didn’t do that. You would lose your nonprofit status, or you would get into trouble in some way or another. That has very quickly changed, and it’s understandable, because there has never been, despite good years and bad years, enough money. This country does not subsidize the arts. The government does not subsidize the arts. In Europe it’s less than it used to be, but still in Germany, England, Italy, and France, there is a great deal of subsidy. Now we are all, as nonprofit institutions, not just theaters, obsessed with money, the bottom line, and “how we can make it through the year?” This is not a good thing. It doesn’t help you. There are various funding sources I know who think that poverty keeps you on your toes. I don’t believe that for one second if you’re a responsible human being, and I think that’s been the biggest surprise to me.
I understand why many theaters are interested in commercial success, because it gives them an income, but that makes me very sad, and it makes me redouble my efforts. I went to Washington with a bunch of people and testified
[BERNIE] USED TO SAY THAT I WAS APOLLONIAN AND HE WAS DIONYSIAN. AND THERE WAS TRUTH IN THAT. BECAUSE HE WAS EXPANSIVE AND LIFELOVING AND WINE-LOVING AND ALL OF THAT. AND I WAS MORE SERIOUS, TROUBLED, AND WORRIED. BUT WE UNITED ON . . . WANTING TO] CREATE A WARM AND RESPECTFUL ENVIRONMENT FOR ARTISTS IN WHICH TO WORK .
several times to continue the NEA and continue subsidy for the arts, and that was in the eighties. I thought there would eventually be more subsidies. The fact that foundations and corporations were turning away from the arts as they are now, I didn’t see that coming.
JCE: Can you talk a little bit about Bernie? AB: Well, Bernie was . . . they don’t make Bernies anymore. They haven’t for quite a while.
Bernie was a manager with flair, and he wasn’t a numbers person. That was what was great about him as a manager. Bernie’s idea of management was, “We are not here to make money or save money. We are here to spend money.” I remember coming up from Playwrights Horizons where we had to watch every penny, and there was this incredible
man, head of management, whose idea of a good time was to spend money even when we didn’t have it, and to dare to do things. And Bernie had the great advantage of being older than we were. He had worked at the Shakespeare Festival, he had produced on Broadway, and he had worked here in the Beaumont when Joe Papp and he were running it for a brief amount of time. And Bernie loved the theater, he loved putting on a show, that’s what he was interested in. Bernie loved hits, and he was never happier than when we had full houses and audiences pouring into all the theaters.
He was an optimist. He always used to say that I was Apollonian and he was Dionysian. And there was truth in that. Because he was expansive and lifeloving and wine-loving and all of that. And I was more serious, troubled, and worried. But we united on certain things. One was we both wanted to create a warm and respectful environment for artists in which to work. I came here from that philosophy, which we very much had at Playwrights Horizons. And he had that himself because he was a warm person and cared about people. If you didn’t know what to do, you could go to Bernie.
And Bernie had this wonderful way of communicating with the Board. Whenever times were tough, he would haul out a chart showing our ups and downs and ups and downs financially,
and they used to call it Gerstenomics What Bernie Gersten had, among many qualities, was a love of the theater and an excitement for it. And I appreciated him a lot when we were working together because we worked together for many years. He was very deferential to me as the artistic director. He never interfered with my decisions or anything like that. But in the past five or six years, if I appreciated him then, I really appreciate him now. I realize with every passing day here how important he was to all of us and to me. And I’ve never met anyone like him again. They just . . . as I said earlier, they don’t make people like him anymore.
JCE: What words of wisdom might you have for the next person who leads this theater?
AB: I would say what pretty much anyone in my position would say, which is: honor the past, be grateful for the present, and work like hell for the future. I hope whoever replaces me will honor the basic values that this theater has always espoused, which is on a day-to-day, workaday level, about creating a warm and supportive home for artists. I would hope that person would continue my obsession with new American plays and musicals, and I hope that person would then take this theater into new dimensions that I didn’t do. I hope that the theater doesn’t change, but I also hope it does. I think that’s healthy. Change is a good thing because change creates opportunities, and opportunities create artists. ▪
Special Thanks
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS SPECIAL ISSUE POSSIBLE, IN ADDITION TO THOSE NAMED AND CREDITED IN THE PREVIOUS PAGES.
MANY THANKS TO JULIA JUDGE, ANNE CATTANEO, JEFF LANGENDORFF AND MASTERPIECE PRINTERS, JAPHY WEIDEMAN, AND THE ENTIRE STAFF OF LINCOLN CENTER THEATER.
JUST AS WE WERE GOING TO PRINT WITH THIS ISSUE, THE NEW LEADERSHIP OF LINCOLN CENTER THEATER WAS ANNOUNCED.
IN JULY OF 2025, LEAR DEBESSONET WILL BEGIN HER TENURE AS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF LINCOLN CENTER THEATER, WITH BARTLETT SHER TAKING ON HIS NEW ROLE AS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.
MAY THIS ISSUE SERVE AS A WARM WELCOME TO THESE TWO VERY SPECIAL ARTISTS.
“I’M JUST SO HAPPY TO BE INCLUDED. I LOVE TO BE AROUND ARTISTIC PEOPLE, WHO CREATE THINGS, WHO ACT, WHO VALUE THE ARTS.”
CHRISTOPHER DURANG , VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIK E
