Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (New York). Built in the 1960s and covering blocks of cityscape on Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, Lincoln Center was the largest and most ambitious arts project in the city's history. The complex of buildings includes the new Metropolitan Opera House, the New York State Theatre, the Avery Fisher Hall, the Alice Tully Hall, and two legitimate theatres: the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatres. The plans for the center included a home for the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, founded in 1960 as a nonprofit theatre designed to offer a permanent company in seasons of classic and new plays. Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan were appointed its co‐directors, and the group's regular homes were to be the Beaumont and the smaller Forum (later Newhouse) Theatre. While the houses were still in the final planning stages and under construction, a training program for a core of performers was initiated in 1962; and in 1964 the company offered its first production, Arthur Miller's After the Fall, at a temporary playhouse, the ANTA‐Washington Square Theatre. The first two regular seasons offered a balance between new American plays and European and American classics, but the critical response was cool, so by the end of 1964 both Kazan and Whitehead resigned and were replaced by Herbert Blau and Jules Irving from the Actor's Workshop of San Francisco. A continued lack of striking success prompted Blau's resignation in 1967 and Irving's in 1972, and for a time Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival attempted to run the problematic theatres. When he and his company threw in the towel, Richmond Crinkley briefly took over management. After several dark seasons, the two playhouses were relit in 1986, but the new leaders, artistic director Gregory Mosher and executive producer Bernard Gersten, abandoned the idea of a repertory ensemble. Since the late 1980s, the theatre company, now simply called Lincoln Center Theatre, has finally flourished. Currently run by André Bishop and Gersten, the group presents plays and musicals in its two spaces all year long and rents Broadway theatres for other offerings. New American and foreign plays, musical and play revivals, and even special, not‐easily‐categorized productions such as Contact (2000) have turned Lincoln Center into one of New York's most vital theatre groups. Gregory [Dean] MOSHER (b. 1949) studied theatre at Oberlin and Ithaca Colleges and trained at Juilliard before going to Chicago in 1974 where he ran the Goodman Theatre and directed the early works by David Mamet and others. During his five‐year tenure at Lincoln Center he was able to turn the troubled institution into a critical and popular success. Since leaving Lincoln Center in 1991, he has concentrated on freelance directing and producing.
