Lynne Meadow, the last of the long-serving artistic directors who for decades led the four nonprofits with Broadway theaters, plans to step down from her current position, she said in an interview.
Meadow, 78, has served as artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club since 1972, and by her own count has produced or presented more than 600 shows, making her one of the most prolific and successful figures in the American theater. Among the successes: the repeatedly extended Lynn Nottage play “Ruined,” which won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2009, and Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which won a Tony Award earlier this month.
She said she will stay with the organization as an artistic adviser, but that a search for a new artistic director is already underway.
Her move will follow that of André Bishop, whose 33-year run leading Lincoln Center Theater ends next week; Carole Rothman, who in 2023 ended a 45-year tenure atop Second Stage Theater; and Todd Haimes, who died in 2023 after running Roundabout Theater Company for 40 years.
The departures mean that, after decades of constancy, a new generation of leaders will oversee the nonprofit presence on Broadway. These institutions, which together control six of the 41 Broadway theaters, over the years have been an important ballast for the industry, preserving a place for new plays, risky work and large-orchestra musical revivals during periods when those types of projects have been less appealing to commercial producers.
“I’m doing this because I feel that the timing is right to do this — there are things that I want to do,” Meadow said. “I’m not tired, and I’m not bored, and I’m not depressed, but I’m excited for Chapter 2.”
Meadow was a 25-year-old Bryn Mawr alumna struggling to find work as a female director, on leave from Yale’s drama school and pondering an offer from the Zabar’s cheese department when, in 1972, she was approached by a group of businessmen who had been impressed by a show she had put together. They had started a fledgling theater company — the Manhattan Theater Club — and they needed someone to run it. She didn’t know how to read a budget, but they offered her a job for three months as executive artistic director, and she said yes. She has been running the company’s artistic operations ever since.
In its early days, M.T.C. was solely an Off Off Broadway company, staging work at the onetime Bohemian Benevolent Society on East 73rd Street. “I welcomed people who were looking for an alternative to Broadway,” she said. “There was always so much talent in New York, and people needed to be seen.”
The company notched some early wins — by 1978, when a Fats Waller revue M.T.C. had first staged called “Ain’t Misbehavin’” transferred to Broadway (and then won the best musical Tony), The New York Times declared: “Miss Meadow has become a figure of consequence in the American theater.” And in 1981, a play that the company staged, Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart,” won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
A few years later, M.T.C. moved to City Center, where it still produces its Off Broadway work, and in 2003 it began producing plays and musicals in its own Broadway house — then called the Biltmore Theater, but since renamed the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.
The nonprofit now has 78 full-time employees and an annual budget of about $30 million. It has won Tony Awards for five productions under Meadow’s leadership: “Jitney,” “Doubt,” “Proof” and “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” in addition to “Eureka Day.” And it has produced seven plays that have won Pulitzer Prizes, including “The Piano Lesson,” “Rabbit Hole” and “Cost of Living.”
Meadow has long championed new playwrights, and has built some lasting artistic relationships. During her time on the job, M.T.C. has staged 13 productions each by John Patrick Shanley and Terrence McNally, and 11 each by Richard Greenberg and Donald Margulies. For most of her tenure, she worked alongside Barry Grove, who retired as the theater’s executive director in 2023.
She said that she will remain as artistic director until her successor is chosen, and then will take on her new role as artistic adviser — a position that has yet to be defined, she said, and will depend on the needs and wants of the new leadership.
“I’m hopefully going to be directing. I’m going to be doing some teaching. And then, I don’t know, because I’ve been doing this so long I’ve never done anything else,” she said. “When I think about it, I can’t imagine that I won’t hold the reins, but I also feel elated about the idea of doing something new.”
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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