André Bishop will conclude his 33-year leadership tenure at Lincoln Center Theater in June 2025 at the conclusion of the non-profit theater company’s 40th anniversary 2024-25 season.
Bishop, whose celebrated tenure as LCT’s Artistic Director and more recently Producing Artistic Director included the premieres of such acclaimed new works as Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia and Arcadia, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, and The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel, to name a very few, announced his intended departure today.
“My years at Lincoln Center Theater have been happy ones,” he said in a statement, “and I will miss working with all my friends and colleagues. But the time has come, as it inevitably does, for the next generation to step in and step up. I look forward to that. LCT has always been a welcoming home for artists, and I know that tradition will continue. I thank the Board for their continued support, and I look forward to collaborating on a seamless transition.”
The Lincoln Center Theater Board of Directors said it would launch a search for a successor “in due course to ensure a seamless, coordinated leadership transition.”
With today’s announcement, Bishop becomes the second major figure in New York’s non-profit theater world to disclose plans to step down: On Wednesday, Carole Rothman, co-founder of the renowned Second Stage, announced her intentions to exit the company she started in 1979.
The two departures set the stage for major changes in Broadway’s non-profit theater community, and signal new leadership at two of the most significant contributors to the city’s – and the country’s – stage works.
Bishop has served as Producing Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater since July 2013. He first joined the organization as Artistic Director in January 1992. Under his stewardship, LCT cemented its position as a one of the city’s most important cultural institutions, with a steady stream of acclaimed stage productions that, in total, won 15 top Tony Awards. He is credited with overseeing the expansion of LCT’s physical space as well as its educational and community outreach efforts.
“André has accomplished so much and touched so many,” said Kewsong Lee, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lincoln Center Theater, in a statement. “His leadership and artistic vision can be credited for Lincoln Center Theater’s longstanding success and impact, and our high stature among the preeminent not-for-profit performing arts organizations in America.” Adam Siegel, Lincoln Center Theater’s Managing Director, said Bishop’s “leadership and guidance have been invaluable to all of us at LCT. On behalf of our entire staff, we look forward to the great productions yet to come under André’s leadership over the next two years and ensuring his heart is as full as he has made ours.”
Other New York, U.S., and world premiere works presented by LCT during Bishop’s tenure include Oslo by J. T. Rogers; Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the vibrator play; A Free Man of Color by John Guare; Hello Again by Michael John LaChiusa; The Substance of Fire and Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz; Contact by Susan Stroman and John Weidman; Via Dolorosa by David Hare; Parade by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown; A Man of No Importance by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty; 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog; and Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau.
Major revivals under Bishop included William Finn and James Lapine musical Falsettos; Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I, South Pacific, and Carousel; Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot and My Fair Lady; August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone; Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing!; Edward Albee’s Seascape and A Delicate Balance; Shakespeare’s Henry IV; Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth; Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven; The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz; and Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood.
Bishop said that among his achievements his is proudest of leading the creation of the Off Broadway Claire Tow Theater on top of LCT’s Vivian Beaumont Broadway venue, and the LCT3 program, whose mission is to produce new work by the next generation of theater artists and engage new audiences. To date, LCT3 has produced 34 new works by artists such as Ayad Akhtar, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Samuel D. Hunter, Nathan Louis Jackson, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Julia May Jonas, Zoe Kazan, Young Jean Lee, Martyna Majok, Dave Malloy, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, Aya Ogawa, and Bryna Turner.
Bishop also directed the growth of Lincoln Center Theater’s education program, Open Stages, with a mission to nurture partnerships with schools that lack the resources to sustain arts programming.
Before arriving at LCT, Bishop served as Playwrights Horizons’ Artistic Director for ten years and as its Literary Manager for six. His many successful productions at that theater included the original productions of three Pulitzer Prize winners: The Heidi Chronicles, Driving Miss Daisy, and Sunday in the Park with George.