Lynne Meadow ’68, Longtime Leader of Manhattan Theatre Club, Takes on New Role

Last week, Manhattan Theatre Club announced that Artistic Director Lynne Meadow ’68 has chosen to step into a new role as artistic advisor for the company. The news was covered by the New York Times. 

“Meadow was a 25-year-old Bryn Mawr alumna struggling to find work as a female director, on leave from Yale’s drama school and pondering an offer from the Zabar’s cheese department when, in 1972, she was approached by a group of businessmen who had been impressed by a show she had put together,” writes Michael Paulson for the Times. “They had started a fledgling theater company — the Manhattan Theatre Club — and they needed someone to run it.”

According to the press release from MTC, the mission statement she created on her first day of work reflected her desire to work with living American and international playwrights as a director and a producer, to present their plays at various stages of development, and to attract the finest talent with whom to collaborate in producing theater. Under Meadow’s leadership, for 53 years, the company has held steadfast to her original artistic vision. 

“I have loved and cherished creating my theatre,” says Meadow, “and I have dedicated myself, for over 50 years, to welcoming and working with the greatest talent in every aspect of our institution. 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.”

Meadow has accepted every major award for the theater 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 NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Obie, Drama League, and Theatre World Awards. Meadow has taught at Circle in the Square Theatre School, Stony Brook University, Yale University, Fordham University, and New York University.