After doing 600 plays over the past 53 years, Lynne Meadow is stepping down as artistic director of Manhattan Theatre Club, one of the city’s most prolific and productive nonprofits. Well, maybe not stepping down but certainly sideways. She is kicking herself upstairs to artistic advisor and will lend her wisdom and know-how to the person who inherits her job. “I feel like I’m just taking a curtsy and not a final bow,” is how she puts it to Observer.
Meadow and Manhattan Theatre Club go back to 1972, when it was the Bohemian National Hall at 321 East 73rd between First and Second Avenues. A cum laude alumna from Bryn Mawr, she was struggling to find work as a director in New York, having graduated from the Yale School of Drama and already spent a year in Paris founding an international theater company.
Despite those imposing credentials, the only job offer she got in New York came from the cheese department at Zabar’s. “I can’t recall who said it, either Brian Friel or Charles Busch: if I had taken Zabar’s up on it, I’d now be running the only dinner-and-snack theater in New York.”
Fortunately, the call of the Upper East Side proved stronger. A group of businessmen had purchased the five-story Bohemian National Hall and were renting out spaces, save for the bar, which took up much of the first floor. Waiting tables there was future Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen (then, “at liberty” from a comedy improv group called Cracked Tokens).
Three stories of the building—some twenty-three rooms—were being offered up, and that intrigued Meadow. “I was always interested in handling more than one thing,” she admits. “I considered this opportunity something akin to a three-ring circus—a play for every room.”
In her first year, she “did a festival of twenty-three plays in seven weeks in every room in the place! Terrence Mcnally’s play called Bad Habits went from there to Off-Broadway.”
The Fats Waller musical Ain’t Misbehavin’ was the big noise at Manhattan Theatre Club when Meadow clocked in there. Developed by director-bookwriter Richard Maltby and with soon-to-be stars like Nell Carter, André De Shields, Ken Page and Charlayne Woodard, it was extended extensively. Eventually, other producers took it to Broadway and got the Tony for Best Musical in 1978.
Over the years, Manhattan Theatre Club scored thirty-one wins in a variety of Tony categories. It got three Tonys for Best Play—in 1995 (Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!), in 2001 (David Auburn’s Proof) and in 2005 (John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt). Also, it won two Tonys for Best 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 Best Play and in 2022 for Best Revival. Then, there were the seven Pulitzer Prizes, fifty-two Drama Desk Awards and forty-nine Obies in between.
“I got my wishes many, many times, thinking of the body of work so many wonderful playwrights let us premiere,” says Meadow, beaming and on the brink of counting her blessings. “I tend to think more passively. Are there other great playwrights? Sure. We’ve had an incredible Golden Age of Theater in New York and not just at Manhattan Theatre Club. A movement was just starting when I first came to New York to be interviewed about getting a directing job. I was the only woman director in my second year at Yale School of Drama.”
Holding Zabar’s at bay, she made the obvious 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. “Everybody said, ‘You want to stage manage.’ Well, that would have been a disaster because I would not be a good stage manager, so I ended up forming my own theater. What has been so great about that are the people who have come, whether it was John Patrick Shanley with his twelve plays or others who have come back so many times—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 recalls past triumphs. “I’m not remotely tired,” she insists. “In fact, I’m more energized than ever. I’m so excited about what I’m calling Chapter Two. I’m just full of ideas and energy about getting back to things I have let slide over the years. I used to teach acting and directing at Yale and NYU and Circle in the Square. I can do that again, and I haven’t directed a show since COVID. It will be good to get back to that for a while, too.”
If Meadow has won big in her selection of plays, it’s because she risks big in picking them. “I hate to be told ‘No’” is her personal philosophy, and it keeps moving her forward.
Of the many Terrence McNally plays launched at Manhattan Theatre Club, the most controversial was Corpus Christi (named after his hometown) and depicted Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. “It was a play he really wanted to work on, so we had a reading of it,” Meadow recalls, “but before we could even talk about the play, we got a phone call from the Catholic League saying ‘You can’t do the play.’ It was particularly stressful for Terrence because of all the scrutiny around it. Part of doing a new play, you know, is working on it and not working on it in a store window. We ended up prevailing, and there were some wonderful actors in it, and we took all the measures that needed to be taken. Of course, the irony was, within a few years, the changes that were happening made Terrence’s play seem tame.”
One of her Pulitzer Prize offerings, Cost of Living by Polish-born playwright Martyna Majok, was a penetrating portrait of two caregivers and the people with disabilities in their care. “It has been my hope that you could see things challenging and that, if we could open up our hearts and minds to certain situations, you’d want to know more about it. The theater is a place to have a great time but also to have new experiences. It’s a real learning time for everybody.
“If you tell a story with enough specificity about people, the work becomes universal. If you’re specific in delving into what it’s like to be such-and-such, the audience comes in. You can open up and find resonance in your own life, even if it’s a world or culture you’ve never known.
Case in point: Jocelyn Bioh’s Tony-contending Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. “The audience who came to see it consisted of many people who’d never been in a salon where women are getting their hair braided,” says Meadow. “For some, it was like going on a trip to somewhere that they didn’t know. Other people were so thrilled to see themselves on stage for the first time, so it became a glorious experience. Isn’t that what theater does, open our hearts and minds?
“For me, what’s kept me going are all the wonderful people in our community and in our city who are positive forces for theater. That’s why I’m not tired. I got a lot of gas in my tank.”
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