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Lynne Meadow. (Photo courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club)

Lynne Meadow to Step Down as MTC Artistic Director

Manhattan Theatre Club’s founding leader will step into the new role of artistic advisor after 53 years at the company’s helm.

NEW YORK CITY: Manhattan Theatre Club today announced that artistic director Lynne Meadow has chosen to step into a new role as artistic advisor after 53 years as the company’s artistic director. The company is undertaking a search for a new artistic director with an external search firm, led by Spencer Stuart.

“I have loved and cherished creating my theatre, and I have dedicated myself, for over 50 years, to welcoming and working with the greatest talent in every aspect of our institution,” Meadow said in a statement. “It was my dream when I started in 1972 Off-Off-Broadway that the Manhattan Theatre Club would become a landmark in New York City. I am immensely proud of the extraordinary body of work so many gifted artists have built together, and I am looking forward to helping to continue the legacy of this great organization under the leadership of its new artistic director.”

Chris Jennings, who began as MTC’s executive director in 2023, will partner with MTC’s new artistic director to helm the company.

“It has been an immense honor and joy to be Lynne Meadow’s partner for the last two years,” Chris Jennings said in a statement. “As a long-time admirer of hers, getting the opportunity to work alongside this theatre icon has only exceeded my wildest dreams. I am thrilled that she will continue to support a new artistic director and me as we continue to build on Lynne and Barry Grove’s remarkable legacy.”

MTC originally occupied three floors of the Bohemian National Hall on East 73rd Street, which included a 150-seat proscenium theatre, a 100-seat cabaret, and rehearsal studios. Meadow was one of the leading figures in the Off-Broadway movement, creating a standard of excellence that quickly gained acclaim and attracted audiences and artists alike.

In 1984, after the company’s first 10 years, she and partner Barry Grove (whom she hired in 1975) moved MTC’s home base to New York City Center, where MTC continues to produce work on two stages. Nearly two decades later, they broke ground at Broadway’s Biltmore Theatre, which they opened in 2003. To date, MTC has produced 61 shows at its Broadway home, now named the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. During Meadow’s tenure, MTC produced over 600 world, American, New York, and Broadway premieres.

Meadow has accepted every major award for the theatre on behalf of MTC—most recently receiving the 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day. Awards earned by the company and its productions include, among many others, seven Pulitzer Prizes, 31 Tony Awards, 52 Drama Desk Awards, and numerous New York Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Obie, Drama League, and Theatre World Awards. She has taught at Circle in the Square Theatre School, Stony Brook University, Yale University, Fordham University and New York University. 

Meadow has twice been nominated for Outstanding Director at the Drama Desk Awards: in 1996 for Leslie Ayvazian’s Nine Armenians and in 1988 for Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind with Stockard Channing. Meadow has also directed productions for the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Alliance Theatre, the Spoleto Festival and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Meadow is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, where she served on the board of trustees. She attended the Yale School of Drama and was named the Herbert Brodkin Fellow in her second year. Meadow has served on several panels, including the New York State Council on the Arts and the theatre panel for the NEA (for which she was co-chair), and she sat for two terms on the Steinberg Award advisory committee. 

Meadow has received numerous awards, including the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, the Manhattan Award from Manhattan magazine, the Person of the Year from National Theatre Conference, the Margo Jones Award, the 2003 Mr. Abbott Award, the 2011 Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2011 Lilly Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Louis Auchincloss Prize. She is a Theater Hall of Fame Inductee.

Manhattan Theatre Club is a not-for-profit theatre that has been under the leadership of artistic director Lynne Meadow since 1972. In 2023, Chris Jennings became her partner, joining MTC as executive director and replacing Barry Grove, who co-led the company for 48 years. Meadow, Jennings and MTC’s staff aim to produce seasons of innovative, entertaining, and thought-provoking new plays and musicals at their Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway and Off-Broadway stages at New York City Center. As of 2022, its budget is around $26.9 million.

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