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= Lincoln Center Theater = Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) is a non profit theater that is one of the resident organizations at Lincoln Center. It's building houses three theaters: The Vivian Beaumont a 1,080 seat Broadway house, the 299 seat Off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, and the newest addition the 112-seat Clair Tow Theater added to the roof of the building in 2012 and dedicated to the performance of new work.

Originally opened on October 21, 1965, as the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, The Theater has gone through several periods of financial and leadership crisis before the current Lincoln Center Theater was established in 1985.

LCT is one of four nonprofit theater companies to own and operate Broadway theaters, along with the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Roundabout Theatre Company, and Second Stage Theater.

Management
The Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) is the nonprofit organization that was formed in 1985, after the previous management of the theatre was reorganized. LCT operates the Vivian Beaumont, the Mitzi E. Newhouse, and Claire Tow theaters. André Bishop is the current Producing Artistic Director. He replaced Gregory Mosher as Artistic Director in 1992. Bernard Gersten was executive producer of LCT from 1982 through 2013. Since his retirement André Bishop has led the company by himself as the Producing Artistic Director.

Prior to being reorganized into its current form a theater had existed in this building at Lincoln Center in various forms:


 * Lincoln Center Repertory Theater, 1962-1973 (also called The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center). Originally Herbert Blau and Jules Irving led as co-directors. When Blau left Jules Irving became Artistic Director.
 * New York Shakespeare Festival at Lincoln Center, 1973-1977, led by Joseph Papp as producer and president.
 * Lincoln Center Theatre Company, 1978-1983 (also called the Lincoln Theatre Company or The Beaumont ).  Richmond Crinkley was the Executive Director and worked with a five member directorate of Woody Allen, Sarah Caldwell, Liviu Ciulei, Robin Phillips, and Ellis Rabb. Edward Albee was the in-house playwright and also part of the artistic leadership.  On August 25, 1983 The Lincoln Center Board barred the theater from using the name Lincoln Center Theatre Company, or accessing joint funds.  This eventually led in 1984 to the formation of the newest version of the company.

Lincoln Center Development
The Lincoln Square Renewal Project had been proposed in 1955 as part of Robert Moses's urban renewal program. Though it was not part of Moses's initial plan, Lincoln Center performing-arts complex became a key part of plans for the area. John D. Rockefeller III led Lincoln Center's development, which from the start included venues for the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet. The first plans for the complex, announced in May 1956, included plans for five commercial theaters. Lincoln Center Inc. was founded in June 1956 to oversee the development, and the company acquired the land in February 1958.

In 1958 Rockefeller named Robert Whitehead as the consultant on the repertory theater. and in late 1959, Elia Kazan was also hired as a consultant for the repertory theater, helping Whitehead select the productions. Whitehead and Kazan established the nonprofit Lincoln Center Repertory Company in February 1960 to oversee the Beaumont's programming.

Planning and Construction
In November 1958, Eero Saarinen was selected as the architect for the Theater. While Saarinen was not as well-connected as some of Lincoln Center's other architects, he was both an experienced auditorium designer and a prominent architect in the middle of his career. Jo Mielziner was hired to collaborate on the theater's interior design.

Originally, the repertory theater and New York Public Library (NYPL) were to be separate buildings but there were concerns that the site allotted to the repertory theater was too small, in part because Moses was intractable in his refusal to reduce the size of the nearby Damrosch Park. So the library building and repertory theater were combined, saving both money and space.

Eero Saarinen and Gordon Bunshaft, the library architect, worked on the building together. They considered and rejected 15 plans for the theater; one such plan envisioned the Beaumont Theater with a concave roof in the center, supported by piers on either side. The final scheme was tested in an unused movie theater in Pontiac, Michigan, where Mielziner drew up plans for theatrical sets he had designed in the past. By August 1960, Saarinen and Mielziner had reportedly finalized their plans for both theaters, though they made minor modifications to these plans through the end of the year.

Excavation started on the theater building's site in 1961. In March 1962 Lincoln Center's directors reported that the theater's completion had been delayed to at least 1964. The delay was caused by the relocation of the repertory group's offices from the Juilliard School building into the library/theater building. The library/theater building ultimately cost $17 million, partly funded by the Rockefeller family, $3 million from Allen and $7.5 million from the NYPL. Allen's philanthropic foundation also gave $2.1 million for training the repertory company's members.

Opening
The Lincoln Center Repertory Company intended to premiere productions in 1963, regardless of whether the Beaumont Theater was completed. They began training in October 1962  and moved into the ANTA Washington Square Theatre, a temporary venue in Greenwich Village, in January 1964. Due to conflicts with Lincoln Center president William Schuman, Whitehead and Kazan resigned and were replaced by Herbert Blau and Jules Irving. A revival of Georg Büchner's play Danton's Death was booked as the inaugural production. The new theater space was officially was officially dedicated on October 14. Preview performances had begun a few days earlier, on October 12th, and the show officially opened on October 21.

Lincoln Center Repertory Theater
The Company offered subscriptions to each season of plays. At the start of the season, there were already 41,500 subscribers, representing over 90 percent of all available subscriptions. While the first season had high grosses, there was much criticism of the plays themselves. Richard P. Cooke of The Wall Street Journal said the Lincoln Center Repertory Company "is still struggling for popular and critical acclaim". Furthermore, the theater itself ran a deficit of several hundred thousand dollars each season, as the expenses outweighed the profits. In it's early productions Lincoln Center Repertory Company frequently starred Philip Bosco, Aline MacMahon, Nancy Marchand, and Robert Symonds. The theater lost subscribers, beginning the second season in 1966 with 31,400 subscribers.

Blau left at the beginning of 1967, saying: "The climate is no longer right for me to do what I came to do in the form I had in mind." In April 1967 the theatre produced Galileo, the first play by an American playwright at the Beaumont; this placated critics who objected to the number of plays by foreign authors. The repertory program was still not successful; The New York Times reported in late 1967 that Lincoln Center's "inability to build a successful repertory theater" was the complex's "greatest shortcoming" creatively. The experimental Forum theater in the building's basement opened on November 10, 1967. The Beaumont theatre was also leased out to other companies when not in use by Lincoln Center Repertory.

By 1969 The theater was still consistently running at a loss, despite near-capacity attendance. In 1971 Lincoln Center's chairman, Amyas Ames, found the Theater was losing $750,000 a year. Lincoln Center's directors forgave $200,000 of the repertory company's debts and agreed to provide another $125,000 a year to cover high overhead costs. In January 1971, City Center proposed taking over the theater and conducting renovations. The plans included relocating the Forum behind the Beaumont's stage and adding three film screens in the Forum space. Mielziner opposed the plans, saying it would compromise the design, but supporters said the main auditorium would not be touched and that the Forum would only be relocated to a better location. Lincoln Center Repertory Theater was given the chance to submit an alternate plan for the theater. and proposed selling 500 annual subscriptions of $1,000 to cover the remaining debt. City Center formally withdrew its plan in December 1971, citing the opposition.

At this point the Forum was mostly screening films. and the Forum's season was canceled in October 1972 due to a lack of funds. Irving resigned as Artistic Director telling the New York Times “If the Forum has to be curtailed, I don't wish to stay here." With Irving gone Lincoln Center provided an emergency grant of $150,000 to help cover the theatre's current Beaumont's season but made clear they could not repeat the grant. For the 1973-1974 Season The Lincoln Center Board, acting on the recommendation of the newly formed committee for theatre at Lincoln Center, set on a strategy of booking regional theatre productions for a "guest season". This was planned as a strictly one time interim measure as they searched for a new artistic leader for the theatre.

New York Shakespeare Festival at Lincoln Center
In March 1973, Joseph Papp of the New York Shakespeare Festival agreed to take over the theater as long as he were able to raise $5 million. Papp used the Beaumont to present new productions and continued to stage experimental shows at The Public Theater. The Forum in the basement would be used for classical plays, a reversal of Irving's policy. Mitzi Newhouse gave Papp a grant of $1 million, and the Forum was renamed for Newhouse. Papp's first season generally had a lukewarm reception.

Papp announced in early 1975 that he would change the Beaumont's programming to revivals of traditional plays and dramas with established performers, citing "hostility" from the audiences. The previous season had only 22,000 subscribers, compared with 27,000 during the 1973–1974 season. He also wanted to raise $3–4 million to renovate the Beaumont with a permanent proscenium stage. In accordance with his new policy, Papp scheduled four revivals for the 1975–1976 season: Trelawny of the "Wells", Hamlet, Mrs. Warren's Profession, and The Threepenny Opera. These plays were generally much more successful, and The Threepenny Opera was extended through the end of 1976. The lengthy run of The Threepenny Opera, as well as financial shortfalls, prompted Papp to delay the beginning of the following season to February 1977, canceling two of the four shows scheduled for the season.

Papp announced in June 1977 that he would no longer operate the Beaumont, citing increasing operating costs. As a result, The Cherry Orchard was forced to close prematurely in August 1977, with Lincoln Center's directors warning that the theater might be closed for two years. At the time, even a successful season could incur a deficit of $2 million; the previous season had seen operating debts of $6.2 million and ticket sales of only $3.9 million. This was despite the fact that Papp had been able to reach 97 percent of audience capacity for many shows. The theater stayed closed even though there was an ongoing shortage of available theaters for new productions. Lincoln Center's directors said the Beaumont's operating expenses were twice as high as traditional Broadway theaters; it cost $1.55 million to mount a typical production at the Beaumont, compared to $930,000 at a typical Broadway theater.

Lincoln Center Theatre Company
After Papp's sudden departure, Lincoln Center's directors hurried to make arrangements with other producers and theatrical companies to keep the Beaumont open. American National Theater and Academy director Richmond Crinkley was named as the Beaumont's executive director in early 1978. At the end of the year, Woody Allen, Sarah Caldwell, Liviu Ciulei, Robin Phillips, and Ellis Rabb were appointed as the theater's new directors, and Edward Albee was hired as the in-house playwright. The theater negotiated with the Actors' Equity Association and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees to permit the Beaumont to operate as a League of Resident Theatres venue, thereby decreasing operating costs. The theater's directors wished to raise $2 million in reserves before reopening the theater, and they wanted to operate for at least one full season. Consequently, the planned reopening in 1979 was pushed back by one year and improvements were also carried out on the building. In July 1980, the directors announced a mixture of classics and new plays for the 1980–1981 season, including Philip Barry's comedy The Philadelphia Story. , Macbeth, Woody Allen's The Floating Light Bulb, and a One Act Play Festival.

The poor reception to the plays prompted Crinkley to keep the theater closed after the 1980–1981 season, which put him in conflict with Lincoln Center's board which wanted to keep the theaters open. Crinkley wanted to renovate the Beaumont first and convert it into a proscenium theater, resolving not only poor sightlines but also inferior acoustics that required some of the more recent plays to use amplification. Conflicts over the Beaumont's operation persisted through 1983. Crinkley also objected to the direct role the Lincoln Center board had taken in the booking of Peter Brook's adaption of Carmen, not because he objected to its programing, but over the issue of who has final say in contracts and details of bookings. Because the theatre was merely leasing the space from Lincoln Center they were in a relatively weak position. In August 1983, Lincoln Center's directors voted to prohibit the Beaumont's board from using either the "Lincoln Center Theater Company" name or $500,000 in annual funds. In 1984, at the end of Carmen run, Lincoln Center's restrictions against the Beaumont board were still in effect, prompting renewed discussions.

Reorganization
The directors of Lincoln Center and the Beaumont reached an agreement in June 1984 in which the Beaumont's management would be reorganized in exchange for the lifting of restrictions. Ten board members and a new chairman would be hired, the Beaumont's board had to publish a detailed report about their goals, missions, and operations. Accordingly, former New York City mayor John Lindsay was appointed as the Beaumont's chairman in September 1984, and Crinkley stepped down the next month. Lindsay submitted a report at the end of that November, promising an "artistic purpose" and proposing a partnership with Juilliard. Gregory Mosher was hired as the director of the Lincoln Center Theater in April 1985, and Bernard Gersten was appointed as the Beaumont's executive producer that June.

Mosher and Gersten Leadership
In Gregory Mosher's and Bernard Gersten's first season running Lincoln Center Theatre they offered $25 season memberships that allowed members to buy a $10 ticket to any production. They had an early success with their revival of John Guare's play The House of Blue Leaves which they transferred from the the Newhouse to the Beaumont for a combined 398 performances

The revision of Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, opened in October 1987 and ran for 804 performances over the next two years. Faced with the success of Anything Goes, LCT chose not to close the show or move it to a commercial Broadway space to allow it to keep programing other shows in its own theaters but instead made the controversial choice to start renting other theaters to produce in. Therefore LCT's 1988–1989 season was hosted at the Lyceum Theatre.

The team faced criticism also for their starry casting choices with Robin Williams and Steve Martin in Waiting for Godot and Madonna in Speed-the-Plow. And when the limited availability of the stars in Waiting for Godot meant that the number of tickets available for the production, 16,744 seats over the course of the run (not accounting for tickets reserved for company members or press), was far less then the number of members 36,000 tickets were granted on a first come first serve basis.

Despite these controversies the team was very successful. Over their first three years they made more than $35 million in box office revenue. Other notable production success included the Guare play Six Degrees of Separation which opened at the Beaumont in November 1990, and ran for 485 performances, the hit South African Musical Sarafina. , and Our Town.

Speed-the-plow, our town ADD MORE ABOUT OTHER THEATERS AND HITS During Mosher's time at the company the theatre produced 35 productions.

Bishop and Gersten Leadership
In 1992 André Bishop joined Bernard Gersten as part of the leadership team. By the mid-1990s, the Beaumont was finally making a profit. LCT had a $25 million annual budget and had sold all 41,000 subscriptions to the theater, with 12,000 people on a waiting list. In December 1995, LCT announced it would close the Beaumont for an extensive renovation lasting six to eight months, relocating Broadway shows to the Plymouth Theatre. The Beaumont reopened in November 1996.

Over the next few years the Newhouse was used more for straight plays or more unconventional musicals while the Beaumont tended to house plays with more mass appeal. During Bishop and Gersten's leadership of the theater LCT brought over The National Theatre's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel, which opened in March 1994 and ran for 322 performances, Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia ran for 173 performances in 1995, Susan Stroman's musical Contact opened in 2000 and ran for 1,010 performances, the musical The Light in the Piazza opened at the Beaumont in April 2005 and had 504 performances over the next year and subsequently, Stoppard's three-part play The Coast of Utopia occupied the theater. A revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific in 2008, ran for 1,000 performances and the next year War Horse opened, running for 718 performances.

When construction work was done in the 2000's a new entrance was added from 65th Street to the Beaumont Theater's plaza level. More significant construction was undertaken to add a third theater to the building with the addition of The Claire Tow Theater on the Beaumont's roof. The space was approved in 2010 specifically as a space for work of emerging playwrights and artists and opened in 2012.

Bishop Leadership
In 2013 Bernard Gersten stepped down as Executive Director and André Bishop assumed control as the sole leader of LCT.

Notable hits during Bishop's tenure include the revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I which opened in April 2015 and ran for 499 performances, J. T. Rogers's play Oslo and Ayad Akhtar's play Junk (both from 2017) and the revival of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner's musical My Fair Lady which played for 509 performances.

ADD INFO ON OTHER THEATERS and Other Productions

The theater was dark when the Broadway industry was shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Beaumont reopened on November 11, 2021, with previews of the musical Flying Over Sunset.

Building
The Lincoln Center Theater Building was one of the last structures designed by Finnish American modernist architect Eero Saarinen, with Jo Mielziner overseeing the design of the interior. Lincoln Center Theater is in the same building as the New York Public Library (NYPL)'s Performing Arts Library.  Original plans conceived the library and theater as separate buildings, but the structures were combined in the final plan. The theater was designed by Saarien, the library was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). and SOM and Saarinen collaborated on the design of the exteriors.

LCT occupies the southern and western sides of its building's first and second floors, while the library wraps above and on top of it. The main facade faces Lincoln Center's plaza and is made of glass and steel, with a travertine attic above.

The theater forms the building's core and occupies the southern and western sides of the building's first and second floors. The library runs along the building's northern and eastern sides, as well as much of the third floor. The theater's stage house protrudes through the third floor, with the library running around it in a "doughnut" shape. Another entrance to the library, facing west toward Amsterdam Avenue, is below the theater. The attic houses the library's stacks. The main facade, along Lincoln Center's plaza, is two stories high and made of glass and steel. The facade consists of a glass curtain wall and two recessed square concrete columns, which create a peristyle flanking the curtain wall. Unlike the travertine surface of the plaza, the columns are finished in exposed aggregate. The columns are attached to the attic via steel pins with large bronze pyramidal covers. The other wall surfaces are clad in travertine. The exterior of the library/theater building contains a heavy roof that protrudes over the main facade, which is covered in travertine. The roof was designed to screen the library and its performing-arts museum behind it.

The theater/library building is on the western side of Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace, the elevated plaza at the middle of Lincoln Center, just south of 65th Street. The plaza contains a reflecting pool at its center, measuring around 80 ft wide and 120 or long. Inside the plaza, just outside the theater's entrance, is a blackened-steel sculpture by Alexander Calder entitled Le Guichet. Named after the French word for "ticket window", the sculpture measures 14 ft wide by 22 ft high. Another sculpture by Henry Moore, entitled Reclining Figure, is in the pool. The structure faces the Metropolitan Opera House to the south; David Geffen Hall to the east; and the Juilliard School to the north, via a pedestrian bridge across 65th Street.

The library/theater building was the third to open at Lincoln Center.

Rather than a traditional coat room, both the Beaumont and the Mitzi have lockers along its public corridors.

Vivian Beaumont
Progressive Architecture wrote that the theater was "one of the most theater facilities in this country". John Chapman of the New York Daily News called the Beaumont's opening "the most important theatrical event of the 1965–66 season in this city", despite the mediocrity of Danton's Death. Wolf Von Eckardt wrote for The Washington Post that the Beaumont had a "classic" architectural appearance "without sweat or striving". The New York Concrete Board gave the Beaumont an award for the quality of its construction.

The Vivian Beaumont is the only Broadway theater outside Manhattan's Theater District, and productions there are eligible for Tony Awards. It is also one of four Broadway theaters owned or operated by a non-profit theatre company. (The others are owned by Manhattan Theatre Club, the Roundabout Theatre Company, and Second Stage Theater). The theater was designed by modernist architect Eero Saarinen, with Jo Mielziner overseeing the design of the interior. Vivian Beaumont Allen, a former actress and heiress to the May Department Stores fortune, donated $3 million in May 1958 for the construction of the repertory theater at Lincoln Center. and Lincoln Center's board of directors then pledged to name the theater after Allen. Allen never saw her namesake theater completed, as she died in late 1962.

Unlike other Broadway theaters, the stage can be configured as a traditional proscenium stage or extended with a thrust stage of varying length. The layout led to complaints about inferior sightlines and acoustics in the theater's early years. In all configurations, every seat is at most 65 ft from the stage. The Beaumont uses steeply sloped stadium seating. which is arranged in a partial semicircle.

Lincoln Center's drama consultant Robert Whitehead had wanted the thrust stage, saying: "There is something exciting in the way the action spills out into the audience and the audience embraces it." For productions that use only the thrust stage, performers enter from underneath the stage, and the proscenium is closed off. Various tunnels were provided under the seating areas for this purpose. Since the semicircular seating precluded good views of the rear of the proscenium stage, many of the theater's productions were forced to use the front of the apron. The unconventional mixture of stage designs prompted many designers and directors to avoid the theater entirely.

The seating capacity of the theater varies, depending on the configuration of the stage; figures from 1,069 to 1,100 have been given. Seats from the front of the orchestra can be stored in the basement when thrust stage is used and additional seats can be removed to make way for vomitories. The stage also has a turntable measuring 46 ft across. 

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
In the lower level of the building is the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, a 299-seat Off-Broadway venue. It is a thrust stage. The theater was designed by Saarinen and Mielziner and was originally only accessible through the Beaumont's parking garage. The Theater was originally known as the Forum when it opened on November 10, 1967. The theater was renamed in 1972 for Mrs. Samuel I. Newhouse, a prominent patron and donor. During planning, Lincoln Center's board could not agree on what types of productions the Forum should present so they built both the Beaumont and The Mitzi (then called the Forum) to allow for more productions.

Claire Tow Theater
In June 2012, LCT opened the Claire Tow Theater on the Beaumont's roof. The space is used for LCT3 productions "shows by new playwrights, directors and designers-new ideas in a new space". In 2008, LCT began to produce LCT3 productions in rented theaters like The Duke and it was only after several years of producing in this way that these production found their permanent home at The Claire Tow. Located on the Beaumont's planted green roof, the Theater seats 112 people and is accessed by elevators from the Beaumont's lobby.

Designed by Hugh Hardy  the two-story, 23000 ft2 glass enclosure is wrapped inside a grille of aluminum louvers that help screen out the sun. The addition also contains rehearsal space, dressing quarters, offices, and a pocket lobby with a bar. The bar features Overture (2012), a sculpture by Kiki Smith. The auditorium is named for Claire Tow, whose husband Leonard, an LCT board member, donated $7.5 million

Other Theaters
LCT mostly hosts its Broadway productions at the Beaumont but has used other theaters when the Beaumont is unavailable, starting in the 1988–1989 season. LCT's Broadway productions were also relocated during the Beaumont's 1996 renovation, as well when they either chose to move a successful show, Dessert Cities or Sarafina or more controversially chose to keep a long running show going in their main theaters and produce new productions in alternative venues such as during the runs of Contact, The Light in the Piazza, and South Pacific. Other theaters used include The Lyceum, The Booth, The Cort and The Royale.