Lincoln Center Theater’s New Artistic Director Lear deBessonet Talks Building ‘Impossible Communities’

For Lear deBessonet, theater has always been about community — and it’s a value she’s bringing with her as she steps into the role of artistic director of Manhattan’s venerable Lincoln Center Theater.

Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:

“My entire journey as an artist has been thinking about the social function of theater and the way that theater creates community, and in some ways it builds impossible communities for people who might not be gathered in any other part of their life,” deBessonet said on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast.

One key step: Making sure every resident of New York City, across all five boroughs, knows they’re welcome at LCT. “We’re doing an outdoor public campaign that involves subways and taxi tops and things like that in the outer boroughs, which are very purposefully an invitation to the city at large,” she said. “The intention is that we aren’t just trying to reach people that are already seeing 12 shows a year. We want people to feel like they could come and see their first ever show here.”

DeBessonet, who officially took over as artistic director of LCT in July, comes to the role after making an early mark at the Public Theater, where she founded the wide-reaching civic arts program known as Public Works. More recently, she was artistic director of the influential Encores! series of concert stagings; during her tenure there, she directed productions of “Into the Woods” and “Once Upon a Mattress” that went on Broadway.

She kicks off her first season of programming at LCT with a Broadway revival of “Ragtime,” another show she initially staged at Encores! Beginning performances later this month with a cast that includes Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy and Brandon Uranowitz, the historical epic about American life in the early 20th century carries special resonance with our current political moment, according to the director: “You absolutely felt an electricity in the audience” when it played last fall at Encores!, she recalled. “And it’s the electricity that’s what I’m always chasing as an artist.”

Also on LCT’s season slate is an Off Broadway iteration of London hit “Kyoto,” a political thriller about the climate accords directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin (“Stranger Things: The First Shadow”), as well as a starry revival of “The Whoopi Monologues,” among other offerings. There’s also a comedy series at LCT3, the institution’s smallest theater space, and a developing collaboration with the chef of Tatiana, the ultra-hot, always-booked restaurant on the Lincoln Center campus. She’s hoping that when taken all together, the entire season adds up to “a feast.”

And she’s making it a focus to ensure that everyone is invited to the table. “I really see Lincoln Center Theatre as a public good, and I want it to be that for people,” she said.

To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network.