By Mervyn Rothstein
29 Jan 2010

When you worked as associate producer for Joseph Papp, the Public Theater championed the careers of many young playwrights, among them David Rabe, Vaclav Havel, Ntozake Shange and John Guare, and helped build the careers of many actors, including James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Martin Sheen and Raul Julia. You've also been called a guiding force in presenting the director Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning Chorus Line. What were your favorites?

The productions that stand out for me include Much Ado About Nothing with Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes in the 1970s. And the John Guare–Galt MacDermot–Mel Shapiro musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, which starred Raul Julia, started in Central Park, moved to Broadway and won the Tony Award as Best Musical in 1972. And, of course, A Chorus Line. Its success was beyond fantasy, so overwhelming even for a theatre that has had its list of successful productions.

Tell me about your childhood and how you became interested in and began working in the theatre.

I grew up in Newark, and at the end of the third grade a play was done to celebrate commencement. I didn't even know what a play was, but I remember that I got the part of a doctor. I was given a topcoat and a satchel, and my grandfather took a pair of eyeglasses he no longer wore and knocked out the glass to give me my first prop. I stood before the curtain, and when it opened — I have convinced myself that there was a synapse connection that took place, the excitement of the curtain going up.

I was in the dramatic club at West Side High School and I was voted best actor in my class. In college I enrolled in a course in business management — I had worked summers in hotels and was convinced I'd like to work in a hotel. I didn't care much for business administration, though, and I failed an accounting class, but the professor promised to give me a passing grade if I promised never to go into accounting.

At Rutgers I was in the Queens Players, the college drama society, and the director was a man named William Corrigan. And there's a direct line from Corrigan to where I'm sitting right now.

I stopped getting acting roles, and I left college after two years to enlist in the Army in World War II. I was stationed in Hawaii, as was Corrigan. The famed actor Maurice Evans had an Army special services entertainment unit there. I saw Evans in Hamlet and I got in touch with Corrigan asking if he would recommend me to Evans. He told Evans I could be useful — move scenery, hang lights, be a stage manager. And I was transferred to the unit.

As a result of being in the special services corps I met a man named Bob Karnes. We became fast friends. He was an actor in California. After the war I stage-managed a couple of plays in New York. In 1948 I was out of work. He called me and said they needed a technical director at the Actors Laboratory in Los Angeles. I accepted the job. That's where I met Joe Papp. And the rest is history.

What are your future hopes for Lincoln Center Theater?

The goal is to have a lasting theatre at Lincoln Center, one that will have continuity beyond its present leaders. We hope it will become as naturally self-preserving as those other, older Lincoln Center institutions. And why shouldn't it? If André and I get run over by a truck next week, our board knows exactly what to do. It knows how to make the transition and find a new leadership every bit as original as I hope we have been.