André Bishop, the longtime producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, could have chosen almost anything for the final Broadway production of his tenure. He’s known for Golden Age musicals, and has a long history with new plays. But he opted to exit with “Floyd Collins,” a dark and tragic 1996 musical about a trapped cave explorer.
Why would anyone select that as their swan song?
“I just thought it’s the kind of serious musical that I want to go out on, because everything in it is something that I believe, in terms of the musical theater,” he told me in an interview last week at his nearly empty office — nearly empty because he’s been giving away his theater memorabilia after deciding he didn’t want his home to turn into a museum. He donated his archives — 174 cartons of papers, photos and notebooks — to the Houghton Library at Harvard University, his alma mater.
“Now there would be some people who say, ‘Why do you have to do all these sad shows? Why can’t you do something toe-tapping?’ Well, that’s just not my nature,” he said. “I felt that Floyd’s looking for a perfect cave was very close to mine looking for a perfect theater — that somehow these theaters that I’ve worked in for 50 years were these perfect caves that I happened to stumble on.”
Bishop, 76, has spent the last 33 years running Lincoln Center Theater, which has a $50 million annual budget, 22,000 members, 65 full-time employees, two Off Broadway stages, and one Broadway house (the Vivian Beaumont). He programmed over 150 plays and musicals, 15 of which won Tony Awards, and then announced in 2023 that he would retire this summer; Monday was his last day on the job, and he is being succeeded by Lear deBessonet, the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center.
His departure is part of a wave of change at Broadway’s nonprofits; all four of the nonprofits with Broadway houses are naming successors for artistic leaders with decades-long tenures.
In the interview, Bishop reflected on his long and successful career, which included a decade running Playwrights Horizons before coming to Lincoln Center Theater. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
So how are you feeling about this moment?
I feel sad. But I feel happy. I’ve worked in the theater for 50 years, and I’ve been the artistic director of two wonderful establishments. What I’m really going to miss is the daily life that goes on in these institutions — first days of rehearsal, closing days of plays, chance encounters in hallways. I’ve had two homes, Playwrights Horizons and Lincoln Center Theater, and I love both those homes passionately.
Why did you decide to retire?
It was time. A new generation should take over.
Is there a show you look back on most fondly?
“South Pacific.” “The Coast of Utopia.” “Awake and Sing!” “The Light in the Piazza.” Our production of “A Delicate Balance.” “Abe Lincoln in Illinois.” “The Substance of Fire.” I could go on and on. They were shows that I remember as being special — not just being good, but having something extra.
Tell me about “Contact,” which I think was the longest-running show of your tenure.
It was just exquisitely well done and it gave incredible pleasure to the audience. People lit up.
Were you nervous about it, since it was primarily dance and didn’t have much dialogue?
No. I thought that was the point. I thought it was a very particular and special piece that gave immense joy.
Were there disasters too?
I can’t tell you the disasters because it would hurt feelings, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
But there were crises?
Of course. God forbid that there shouldn’t be. There were shows that didn’t work out the way that we had hoped. That’s part of it.
How do you think about balancing the desire to take risk with the desire to be successful?
Those two things are not diametrically opposite. There have a been a number of times in my career where taking an artistic risk led to success. When we did “South Pacific,” everyone said, “You’re crazy. You can’t do that anymore. It’s too dated. The racial situations are difficult.” I felt we could do it if we did it well, and honorably, and seriously, and properly. We did it, and the show was reborn.
How do you think a nonprofit theater should differ from a commercial theater?
They should, and do, take more risks. But I think the lines between the commercial theater and the nonprofit theater have become blurred in the last five or six years, and I don’t see that as a bad thing. It has created a more united theater community in New York than existed when I started out.
You had very long relationships with some artists, notably Wendy Wasserstein.
What I love about the nonprofit theater is the continuity that you can achieve in it. You’re not doing plays as a one-off. You’re doing a group of plays from a group of writers put on by a group of people. And if you can do that over the course of X number of years, it’s a lovely thing because you get to know the artist better. Familiarity usually breeds trust. And if you trust the artist, the artist will respond to that sense of trust.
You have the only Broadway house outside of Midtown. How does that affect you?
It’s nice being up here. People like to come to Lincoln Center, and the work that they did to redesign it has made it even lovelier.
You also have an unusually shaped Broadway stage, with a thrust configuration.
When it’s well-used, even in a grand way, it seems so intimate because no row is that far away from the stage. But certain plays don’t work as well — farces are difficult to do because in a farce you want everyone looking in the same direction at the same time, and in a thrust theater it’s very rare that everyone is looking in the same direction at the same time.
How do you think Broadway is doing?
The shows that are doing well are doing very well. This past spring the theaters were packed with people, and very young people — much younger than I used to see 10 or 15 years ago.
And Off Broadway?
The work that I have seen onstage, on Broadway and Off Broadway, in the past year or two has been really excellent.
But so many nonprofits are facing financial challenges.
Nonprofits have always faced financial challenges. I’ve never known a time that was not financially challenging. Some years were better than others, but that’s just part of it.
One of the legacies of your time here is the construction of a small theater on the roof.
I was looking back at my very first contract here, from 1991, and there was one paragraph that I insisted being in it — my desire to build a black box theater somewhere at Lincoln Center Theater. Years went by and I kind of forgot about it — we were too busy. And then one day I was sitting on that sofa, and I was thinking, “I have to find a new generation, and the only way to do that is to put on more shows.” And that’s when I thought, “We have to build another theater in which we can produce the work of younger writers and younger directors and designers.”
Do you have any advice for Lear deBessonet?
I would give her the same advice that I got, which is to follow your instincts, follow your heart.
So what’s next for you?
In the beginning of September, I’m going to the American Academy in Rome to finish writing this book of memoirs that I’ve been working on for years. I have a lot of stories.
Will you keep seeing shows when you get back?
Oh God, yes.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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