LCT Celebrates 25 Years With Online Interview Series | Playbill

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PlayBlog LCT Celebrates 25 Years With Online Interview Series In honor of its 25th anniversary, Lincoln Center Theater is giving fans and friends a chance to hear its theatrical war stories from those that lived them.


In this new online interview series, voices run the gamut from executive director Bernard Gersten and artistic director Andre Bishop to LCT director of education Kati Koerner and associate production manager Paul Smithyman, stopping along the way for conversations with the playwrights, actors, composers and directors who created some of Lincoln Center Theater’s most memorable productions. Together, these stories re-create notable moments in LCT’s past and present, from its first “trial” year through its greatest successes and innovations.

Interviews include:

Playwright John Guare, whose The House of Blue Leaves was one of the first plays ever to grace the new theatre space (and whose cast included a very young Ben Stiller). Guare tells the story of LCT’s first year, when Gersten and co-founder Gregory Mosher gave the Lincoln Center venue “one last chance, before it became a parking garage, or an ice rink,” and discusses the creation of his hit Six Degrees of Separation.

Director/choreographer Susan Stroman, who recounts the inspiration behind her Tony-winning dance-theatre piece Contact, about people striving for human connection, and her struggle to cast the critical character of “the girl in the yellow dress.”

Lyricist-composer team Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who followed Bishop and LCT associate producer Ira Weitzman from Playwrights Horizons to their new home at Lincoln Center. Four of their shows have since been produced at Lincoln Center, including The Glorious Ones and Dessa Rose.

Executive director Bernard Gersten, who has been with LCT since its founding in 1985.  (Playbill recently interviewed Gersten on his Life in the Theatre. Read that interview here.)

These and many other interviews provide an astonishing behind-the-scenes view of a New York theatre landmark. As Stroman says, “There is no place like Lincoln Center…no place like it.”

To view these video interviews, click here.

—Gemma Wilson

 
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