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