After doing 600 performs over the previous 53 years, Lynne Meadow is stepping down as creative director of Manhattan Theatre Membership, one of many metropolis’s most prolific and productive nonprofits. Effectively, perhaps not stepping down however actually sideways. She is kicking herself upstairs to creative advisor and can lend her knowledge and know-how to the one who inherits her job. “I really feel like I’m simply taking a curtsy and never a closing bow,” is how she places it to Observer.
Meadow and Manhattan Theatre Membership return to 1972, when it was the Bohemian Nationwide Corridor at 321 East 73rd between First and Second Avenues. A cum laude alumna from Bryn Mawr, she was struggling to search out work as a director in New York, having graduated from the Yale College of Drama and already spent a yr in Paris founding a world theater firm.
Regardless of these imposing credentials, the one job supply she received in New York got here from the cheese division at Zabar’s. “I can’t recall who stated it, both Brian Friel or Charles Busch: if I had taken Zabar’s up on it, I’d now be operating the one dinner-and-snack theater in New York.”
Fortuitously, the decision of the Higher East Aspect proved stronger. A gaggle of businessmen had bought the five-story Bohemian Nationwide Corridor and have been renting out areas, save for the bar, which took up a lot of the primary flooring. Ready tables there was future Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen (then, “at liberty” from a comedy improv group referred to as Cracked Tokens).
Three tales of the constructing—some twenty-three rooms—have been being provided up, and that intrigued Meadow. “I used to be all the time taken with dealing with a couple of factor,” she admits. “I thought of this chance one thing akin to a three-ring circus—a play for each room.”
In her first yr, she “did a competition of twenty-three performs in seven weeks in each room within the place! Terrence Mcnally’s play referred to as Dangerous Habits went from there to Off-Broadway.”
The Fat Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin’ was the large noise at Manhattan Theatre Membership when Meadow clocked in there. Developed by director-bookwriter Richard Maltby and with soon-to-be stars like Nell Carter, André De Shields, Ken Web page and Charlayne Woodard, it was prolonged extensively. Ultimately, different producers took it to Broadway and received the Tony for Greatest Musical in 1978.
Through the years, Manhattan Theatre Membership scored thirty-one wins in a wide range of Tony classes. It received three Tonys for Greatest Play—in 1995 (Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!), in 2001 (David Auburn’s Proof) and in 2005 (John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt). Additionally, it received two Tonys for Greatest Revival—in 2017 (August Wilson’s Jitney) and in 2025 (Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day). Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out took Tonys coming and going—in 2003 for Greatest Play and in 2022 for Greatest Revival. Then, there have been the seven Pulitzer Prizes, fifty-two Drama Desk Awards and forty-nine Obies in between.
“I received my needs many, many occasions, considering of the physique of labor so many great playwrights allow us to premiere,” says Meadow, beaming and getting ready to counting her blessings. “I are inclined to assume extra passively. Are there different nice playwrights? Certain. We’ve had an unimaginable Golden Age of Theater in New York and never simply at Manhattan Theatre Membership. A motion was simply beginning after I first got here to New York to be interviewed about getting a directing job. I used to be the one lady director in my second yr at Yale College of Drama.”
Holding Zabar’s at bay, she made the plain stops and pleaded her case to the then-reigning theatrical kingpins—Marshall Mason at Circle Rep, Bob Moss at Playwrights Horizons and Joe Papp/Bernie Gersten at The Public. “All people stated, ‘You wish to stage handle.’ Effectively, that will have been a catastrophe as a result of I’d not be a great stage supervisor, so I ended up forming my very own theater. What has been so nice about which might be the individuals who have come, whether or not it was John Patrick Shanley along with his twelve performs or others who’ve come again so many occasions—Marsha Norman, Joe Orton, Richard Greenberg, Lynn Nottage, David Lindsay-Abaire, Donald Margulies, Theresa Rebeck, Beth Henley, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Joshua Harmon.”
Meadow’s voice quickens as she remembers previous triumphs. “I’m not remotely drained,” she insists. “In actual fact, I’m extra energized than ever. I’m so enthusiastic about what I’m calling Chapter Two. I’m simply stuffed with concepts and power about getting again to issues I’ve let slide through the years. I used to show performing and directing at Yale and NYU and Circle within the Sq.. I can try this once more, and I haven’t directed a present since COVID. It will likely be good to get again to that for some time, too.”
If Meadow has received large in her collection of performs, it’s as a result of she dangers large in choosing them. “I hate to be informed ‘No’” is her private philosophy, and it retains shifting her ahead.
Of the numerous Terrence McNally performs launched at Manhattan Theatre Membership, essentially the most controversial was Corpus Christi (named after his hometown) and depicted Jesus and the Apostles as homosexual males dwelling in modern-day Texas. “It was a play he actually wished to work on, so we had a studying of it,” Meadow remembers, “however earlier than we might even speak concerning the play, we received a telephone name from the Catholic League saying ‘You possibly can’t do the play.’ It was significantly nerve-racking for Terrence due to all of the scrutiny round it. A part of doing a brand new play, you understand, is engaged on it and never engaged on it in a retailer window. We ended up prevailing, and there have been some great actors in it, and we took all of the measures that wanted to be taken. In fact, the irony was, inside a couple of years, the modifications that have been occurring made Terrence’s play appear tame.”
Considered one of her Pulitzer Prize choices, Value of Dwelling by Polish-born playwright Martyna Majok, was a penetrating portrait of two caregivers and the individuals with disabilities of their care. “It has been my hope that you may see issues difficult and that, if we might open up our hearts and minds to sure conditions, you’d wish to know extra about it. The theater is a spot to have a good time but additionally to have new experiences. It’s an actual studying time for everyone.
“Should you inform a narrative with sufficient specificity about individuals, the work turns into common. Should you’re particular in delving into what it’s prefer to be such-and-such, the viewers is available in. You possibly can open up and discover resonance in your personal life, even when it’s a world or tradition you’ve by no means identified.
Living proof: Jocelyn Bioh’s Tony-contending Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. “The viewers who got here to see it consisted of many individuals who’d by no means been in a salon the place ladies are getting their hair braided,” says Meadow. “For some, it was like occurring a visit to someplace that they didn’t know. Different individuals have been so thrilled to see themselves on stage for the primary time, so it grew to become an excellent expertise. Isn’t that what theater does, open our hearts and minds?
“For me, what’s stored me going are all of the great individuals in our group and in our metropolis who’re optimistic forces for theater. That’s why I’m not drained. I received plenty of gasoline in my tank.”
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