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[0:00] Lear deBessonet: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to talk about this new chapter at Lincoln Center Theater.

[0:30] Lear deBessonet: As I step into this role, I feel a deep sense of responsibility and also a sense of joy. The opportunity to lead such an iconic institution is truly a dream come true.

[1:00] Lear deBessonet: The first production of my season is a revival of "Ragtime," which is a show that holds a special place in my heart. It speaks to so many themes that are relevant today.

[1:30] Lear deBessonet: When I think about "Ragtime," I think about the spectacle of it, the music, and the way it brings together different narratives and voices. It's a powerful piece that resonates with audiences.

[1:40] Lear deBessonet: I believe theater has the ability to create sacred spaces where we can come together as a community, reflect on our shared experiences, and find connection.

[1:50] Lear deBessonet: This season, I want to focus on the value of theater in our lives. It's not just about entertainment; it's about fostering dialogue and understanding.

[2:00] Lear deBessonet: I'm also excited about the lineup we have planned. We have a mix of new works and revivals that I think will really engage our audiences.

[2:10] Lear deBessonet: Looking ahead, I see Lincoln Center Theater as a place where we can push boundaries and explore new ideas. I want to create an environment that encourages innovation.

[2:20] Lear deBessonet: Community engagement is also a priority for me. I want to ensure that we are reaching out to diverse audiences and making theater accessible to everyone.

[2:30] Lear deBessonet: I think it's important for us to listen to our community and understand what they want to see on our stages. Their voices matter.

[2:50] Lear deBessonet: As we move forward, I hope to cultivate a sense of belonging at Lincoln Center Theater. I want everyone to feel that they have a place here.

[3:00] Lear deBessonet: The future of LCT is bright, and I am committed to making it a space where creativity thrives and where artists can take risks.

[3:10] Lear deBessonet: I believe that the stories we tell through theater can inspire change and foster empathy. That's the power of the arts.

[3:30] Lear deBessonet: I'm looking forward to collaborating with artists who are passionate about their work and who want to push the envelope.

[3:40] Lear deBessonet: I think we have a responsibility to reflect the world around us and to challenge our audiences to think critically about the issues we face.

[3:50] Lear deBessonet: In this new role, I want to honor the legacy of Lincoln Center Theater while also paving the way for future generations of artists.

[4:10] Lear deBessonet: It's an exciting time to be in theater, and I can't wait to see what we can create together.

[4:20] Lear deBessonet: Thank you for this opportunity to share my vision for Lincoln Center Theater. I hope to see you all at the shows!

[4:30] Lear deBessonet: Let's make this season one to remember, filled with incredible stories and unforgettable experiences.

[4:50] Lear deBessonet: I truly believe that theater can change lives, and I'm honored to be part of this journey.

[5:00] Lear deBessonet: I look forward to welcoming everyone to Lincoln Center Theater and sharing this incredible art form with you.

[5:10] Lear deBessonet: Together, we can create something magical that resonates with audiences for years to come.

[5:20] Lear deBessonet: Thank you again for having me, and I can't wait to embark on this adventure with all of you.

[5:30] Lear deBessonet: Let's celebrate the power of theater and the stories that connect us all.

[5:40] Lear deBessonet: I'm excited to see how we can grow and evolve as a community through our shared love of the arts.

[5:50] Lear deBessonet: Here's to a fantastic season ahead at Lincoln Center Theater!

[6:00] Lear deBessonet: Thank you!

[11:35] Lear deBessonet: And to connect in joy. Also, they all are things that involve music and color and some measure of spectacle. And I think, you know, it's not a coincidence that I direct big musicals, that that's part of what I do, right? Those roots are very, very deep. And so, I think my love of what we think of as more traditional theater also began quite early. You know, my mother, we had a piano in our kitchen growing up, and my mom had like the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook and would play those songs in the kitchen. And she had other classic musical theater songbooks. You know, I directed Into the Woods and Once Upon a Mattress recently on Broadway, and both of those were scores that my mom had and played in our kitchen when I was a child.

So, she didn't have Ragtime because I was already, I was 18 when Ragtime came out. One of the more recent ones, yeah. Yeah. But I loved those stories. And, you know, I remember, and this has been affirmed by family members and neighbors, that I was, when I was about five, I started saying, like, I want to be a theater director when I grow up. And, of course, in many ways, I had no idea what that meant. I didn't even know that it was a job or that there was a profession. But I wanted to make plays. I wanted to make shows. And I had a neighborhood theater company in my backyard that I directed with my sister and our dog and other kids from the neighborhood, starting when I was five.

[13:21] Gordon Cox: Right. And is it your intention to direct something every season? You've got, you know, you're opening this show that you had directed at Encores! and now you're directing here at Lincoln Center. How do you think about your own work as a director fitting into your work as the artistic director?

[13:38] Lear deBessonet: Yeah, I think I will direct one show a season here. It could be in any of the spaces. But that's also, you know, I was at the Public Theater for almost nine years as both the resident director and the founder of Public Works. And then when I went to Encores! as the artistic director, in both of those jobs, I directed one show a season for the theater. So it's a rhythm that feels very good to me. And I think I'm excited by the way, essentially, being on both sides of the table, still being an artist, working in my own theater, I feel like it's tremendously educational and trying to think about how to give artists their best experience, knowing, you know, the frustrations of, goodness, there's no storage stage left here, is very helpful, right?

Because then when you're working with other artists, you yourself are aware. And also, I feel like, you know, I want to bring the best of my artistry to deliver for Lincoln Center Theater and to contribute to this mission that I'm here to serve.

[14:58] Gordon Cox: Yeah. I'll have more with Lear right after this break. And now here's more of my conversation with Lear deBessonet.

[15:07] Gordon Cox: Let's talk about your first season. What was important to you to highlight in this sort of first introduction to you and your programming?

[15:17] Lear deBessonet: Well, I wanted to produce great art that will bring people a lot of joy and also that will provoke thought, new thought. And I was really thinking about wanting to be in a relationship with my audience, with our audience, where they get to, first of all, I wanted to deliver something exciting for them holistically. But also, I really wanted to think about, you know, I love the history of this organization so much. And I wanted people to feel like the things that are the most precious to them about Lincoln Center Theater, things that people truly love, like the ability to come and see a sumptuous musical with a huge, gorgeous orchestra that takes your breath away. Things like South Pacific and My Fair Lady and The King and I and these Beaumont productions.

I wanted the audience to feel like, yes, you're still going to see sumptuous, beautiful revivals at Lincoln Center. I also feel like there's a tradition that I love here of new plays that are, that sort of bring, that are fiercely intelligent plays that really bring kind of the global political dialogue onto a stage. I think about things like Oslo that have happened here that, again, to me, are part of what Lincoln Center Theater does so distinctly and well. So, we have, you know, Ragtime is the first show in the Beaumont, but the first show in the Mitzi is a new play called Kyoto that's written, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, great directors, and written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, the Joes.

And the Joes' previous work in New York was their play The Jungle, which was quite an incredible show. And this, their new work, is a political thriller that dramatizes the Kyoto climate agreements. And it basically follows 10 years of what it takes for a group of nations, you know, in a sort of UN context to duke it out, to actually, like, fight through language to try to reach an agreement about something like language around climate change. So, the show is set, you know, in 1997, but it dramatizes a 10-year process. The writing is thrilling. When I first read this play, I started out reading it laying down in bed at night, and I immediately sat up. It was, I was so energized by the writing, and it just felt, it was just an extraordinary play.

And so, I wanted audiences to know that, yes, you know, you're gonna also see things like that. And then we're doing, you know, after Kyoto, our next show up in the Mitzi is a new thing for us. We're doing our first piece of family programming, and it's a children's holiday opera called Amal and the Night Visitors that we're doing in collaboration with The Met. Another priority to me was collaborations across this campus. You know, I would love to collaborate with The Phil and The Ballet and The Met and all of these wonderful organizations that share this campus. And so, I'm really proud, even in this first season, to have both programming that is actually for families, and also that is a collaboration across campus.

I should mention that that show, Amal and the Night Visitors, stars the great Joyce DiDonato, legendary opera singer, and it's directed by Kenny Leon. So, it's, again, really delivering the highest level of artistry up with stories that we believe will be resonant. Then the show after that in the Mitzi, our third Mitzi show, is an amazing collaboration. It was a project brought to me by the actress Kerry Washington, actress-producer, you know, great, great human being, Kerry Washington, and it's a project with Whoopi Goldberg. This is taking Whoopi Goldberg's unbelievable 1985 show and the vision that they had, along with director Whitney White, who's directing this production, was to take Whoopi's one-woman show in which she creates these five magnificent characters.

The writing of this show is, it is hilarious. It is scathing. It is, you know, it still feels revolutionary, even though it was written in 1985. And the idea was to actually let five actresses each embody one of those characters to create this ensemble. And so, we have Kerry as one of those actresses, Kerry Young, the brilliant, brilliant Kerry Young, who cannot be stopped, who's been nominated for a Tony Award each of the past four years for really good reason. She's truly a genius. She's also in that show. And again, it just felt so exciting. And then to have these new things like, you know, with LCT3, in addition to our comedy series and special events like, you know, we're doing a public reading series where we have some of our Beaumont-commissioned writers like Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, and Lynn Nottage, and Sarah Rule, and Ayad, and JT there, and Marco Ramirez there, each identifying a voice new to Lincoln Center, and we're going to have the two playwrights in dialogue with each other and then hear a reading of the newer writer's play.

So, that's also to say we have a new musical and a new play happening upstairs at LCT3. We have the Lazur brothers' brilliant, brilliant musical Nightside Songs, and then we have the play A Woman Among Women. So, I think of it really as a feast. Ultimately, to me, being an artistic director is a lot like throwing a dinner party where, you know, first of all, the whole aim is really to be of service and to provide joy and nourishment for others and to bring people together around a table. And you're hoping that the balance of the flavors, the balance between the courses adds up to a richness that's beyond any one dish itself, right? So, that's how I was thinking.

[21:56] Gordon Cox: Did it feel particularly important to you to revisit Ragtime again? You staged it about a year ago, or will be about a year ago once it starts, and it had a particular resonance then in our nation. Why was it of interest to you to revisit it, and how do you expect it to change either physically or kind of emotionally in this new incarnation on the Beaumont stage?

[22:22] Lear deBessonet: Yeah, so we were able to do a staged concert version of Ragtime at Encores! last year as the gala, and it was running the week before and the week after the election. It ran for two weeks, and I can't even describe the feeling in the room with that production and how profoundly emotional and resonant it was, and not in a uniform way. You know, people experienced the show very differently. People experienced it differently the day before and the day after the election. But also, you know, Ragtime is an epic narrative that weaves together the stories of these three families along with a sort of bigger portrait of America at the

[23:10] Lear deBessonet: I really clearly felt from the audience that people had their own experience with it. Some people were particularly attached to the journey of one character, and that was different for different people. But you absolutely felt an electricity in the audience, and it's the electricity that's what I'm chasing as an artist, always. My whole goal is to find work that means something to people. I think, to me, Ragtime is an American masterpiece. It is, as a study in what musical theater can do, the type of storytelling, the complexity and emotionality of storytelling that can happen in a musical. It's just extraordinary, the music, the score. We have a 28-piece orchestra and 33 actors on stage. It's just sweeping and glorious.

I was excited to be able to offer that up in a fully staged production as opposed to a concert, and also for a longer run, to bring in more people. We did not have space nearly at Encores! for those who wanted to see it. I really felt like what the show is saying, and again, it's saying more than one thing. It speaks in many ways, because it's telling human stories that are not didactic, that are human. But I really believe that it speaks uniquely to us in this time, because it's looking at another moment in our history, a moment of tremendous change and transformation, where the combination of new technologies and new ideas were colliding with history, with precedent, and human lives found themselves sort of in the crossroads of these bigger social and political shifts of a time.

It feels deeply resonant, and part of my belief in why to ever revive anything is that it's the opportunity to hear it anew, to see it anew, and with a great work. I certainly experienced this with something like King Lear. The experience that I have when I see that as a 19-year-old is very different than the experience that I have seeing it as a 30-year-old, or that I might have seen it as a 65-year-old, or a 90-year-old. We are all constantly changing, and as is the moment around us, right? So I really felt like there was just richness here for people to come, to bring themselves in this moment where we are in America, where we are in history, but also where people are in their own stories, and to find something of tremendous worth in Ragtime.

[26:31] Lear deBessonet: And as you're beginning to look ahead at future seasons and imagining the work that you might do, and the activities that might expand under your tenure, what do you feel like you would hope to shift in Lincoln Center, whether it's improve, or expand, or deepen, or what do you feel like is ripe for change right now in the organization? Yeah. I mean, this relates to a feeling that I have that's beyond just Lincoln Center. It's really about what is the meaning of theater in our time, and theater especially in a moment where the quality of being able to view performance on Netflix, you're able to access incredibly high levels of acting and writing, and visual storytelling on television and in movies.

And to have that at the snap of two fingers, you can be in your pajamas eating Twizzlers and watching six inches from your face, one of the greatest performances of all time. So that presents an interesting question. It actually invites theater artists and people like me who are taking care of a theater institution to really think about what is our function? Why would someone come here? Why should they come here? Why should people make time for this? And I think a trend that for me was really interesting to observe post-pandemic is we saw, you know, restaurants and live music came back in a way that you could really see that part of what people were responding to was a notion of event, right?

Having something special to do, particularly something to do with friends or, you know, in a romantic context, but something where people are showing up live for something that, again, it's an experience you know is going to be unique and you're going to remember for the rest of your life. You know, people show up for that. And I think what we have seen, you know, theaters around the country are really still struggling to regain their pre-pandemic numbers. And to me, it's really about meeting that need for specialness in people's lives, for event, for something that's going to make them feel socially connected to within their own relationships. And so, that is a driving factor. Like, I don't consider it enough that I think a play is interesting.

I have to really believe that a lot of other people will also think it's interesting. And I think I'm also very interested, you know, at Lincoln Center Theater in the past, we've really, you know, we've produced the shows and again, the quality of work I'm just so proud of, but we haven't done a ton of other, there haven't been a ton of other ways that people could enter the space of the building, right? Things like conversations, events, reasons to be here that aren't just to see a show. And I'm very interested in that. I'm interested in a journey that over the next couple of years, really, you know, opens up our lobby area that we, that, you know, food and visual art and just, again, conversations and reasons to gather here to find Lincoln Center Theater as a place of belonging, where you want to come not just to see one show, but because it's a place that is always worth your time. You know, that's what I'm longing for.

[30:18] Lear deBessonet: And I also am really, the work our education department does with young people is awesome. And I'm looking for, you know, ways to integrate that more fully with the whole. We're also, this year, for the first time, expanding our education department. It's now the education and community engagement department. So, that means we won't just be working with young people who are school age. We'll be working with people of all ages and in, you know, in communities, again, beyond school communities. And that feels hugely important to me. I think there are, I really see Lincoln Center Theater as a public good, and I want it to be that for people. And that plays out in, you know, both big macro decisions about programming and in micro decisions.

You know, one of the things that people will probably notice soon is that, you know, you have choices within a marketing budget for a show of where you spend your dollars. And overall, in Broadway marketing, especially because again, a Broadway show is selling a single show, right? They're not necessarily needing to build like a permanent space or kind of home for people. And so, the trend is ever more in digital marketing to really, you know, like I, as a person that sees many Broadway shows a year, will get just like e-bombed, right? With like ticket, like information about shows marketing to me, because there's a lot of sort of quick return on online marketing to people that have already bought eight other Broadway tickets that year.

We are making, I'm making a really purposefully different decision with Lincoln Center Theater. There will still be online things, but we're doing an outdoor public campaign that involves, you know, subways and taxi tops and things in the outer boroughs, things that are very purposefully an invitation to the city at large. And the intention is that we aren't just trying to reach people that are already seeing 12 shows a year. We really want people to feel like they could come and see their first ever thing here. And that is intentional.

[32:38] Gordon Cox: You are on a lunch break right now during rehearsals of Ragtime. You are about to go back in. Where are we in the rehearsal process?

[32:49] Lear deBessonet: Good question. We are actually in my second to last day of pre-production before we start the full rehearsals. But these are still quite full and intense days where basically I'm in the room with the music team and the choreography team and my own team. And we are working through the highly complex staging and tracking of everything so that when the actors show up, we have these very detailed charts where we've already solved things like, yes, Scrim 2 is flying in here, which means that nobody can enter from the second wing, which means when you do your costume change into your hat, you have to get that from right one. So it's this very, very rigorous, detailed work that allows a show of this scale to function.

[33:38] Gordon Cox: Well, I will let you get to it. Thanks so much for talking, Lear, and we can't wait to see Ragtime again. This is such a delight. Thank you.

[33:48] Lear deBessonet: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was Lear deBessonet, the new Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater and the Director of Ragtime, which starts performances at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, September 26.