Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), one of Broadway’s nonprofit institutions, has announced that its longtime artistic director, Lynne Meadow, will step down from that role. Meadow, who has been with the organization for over five decades, will move into the newly created role of artistic advisor.
Meadow joined MTC as artistic/executive director in 1972, only two years after the organization was established. At the time, the Off-Off-Broadway company comprised a 150-seat proscenium theater and a 100-seat cabaret and rehearsal studio at the Bohemian National Hall on East 73rd Street in Manhattan. Under Meadow’s leadership, alongside former MTC executive director Barry Grove (whom she hired in 1975), MTC expanded to larger spaces, moving in 1984 to two venues at New York City Center. While many MTC productions were mounted on Broadway prior to 2003, the company did not have its own Main Stem theater until its 2003 acquisition of the Biltmore Theatre, which they renamed the Samuel J. Friedman in 2008.
At the Friedman, MTC has produced 61 Broadway productions to date, including the 2025 Best Revival of Play Tony Award winner “Eureka Day” and the currently running “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends.” Other notable productions shepherded by MTC during Meadow’s tenure include Best Play Tony winners “Proof” and “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” Best Revival Tony winner “Jitney,” recent Main Stem mountings of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” “Prayer for the French Republic” and “How I Learned to Drive.”
“I have loved and cherished creating my theater,” Meadow said in a statement. “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.”
“It has been an immense honor and joy to be Lynne Meadow’s partner for the last two years,” said MTC executive director Chris Jennings, who joined the organization in 2023, succeeding Grove. “As a longtime admirer of hers, getting the opportunity to work alongside this theater 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’s board of directors will work with the consulting firm Spencer Stuart to select a new artistic director.
As previously reported, MTC’s upcoming season will include James Graham’s “Punch” and David Lindsay-Abaire’s “The Balusters” on Broadway at the Friedman, and Martyna Majok’s “Queens” and Ngozi Anyanwu’s “The Monsters” Off-Broadway at New York City Center’s Stages I and II.
