Manhattan Theatre Club Executive Producer Barry Grove to Step Down at End of 2022-2023 Season

Barry Grove will step down as the Executive Producer of Manhattan Theatre Club at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 season.

Under Lynne Meadow and Grove's leadership, MTC has produced nearly 450 American and world premieres and MTC productions have earned 28 Tony Awards®, 7 Pulitzer Prizes, and 50 Drama Desk Awards, as well as numerous Obie, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World Awards and, in 2001, the prestigious Jujamcyn Award.

MTC's first ten seasons took place off-off-Broadway in a three-story Bohemian social hall on East 73rd Street in New York City. During those years, acclaimed MTC productions transferred to new venues off-Broadway as well as to Broadway.

In the 1983-84 season, Grove and Meadow moved the company off-Broadway to New York City Center, creating a 300-seat theatre and, a year later, adding a 150-seat theatre. Many of the productions MTC premiered at its two City Center houses went on to be performed in extended runs in New York and across the country.

In 2001, Grove led the organization to renovate and reopen the Biltmore Theatre as MTC's permanent Broadway home and their third performance space. Theirs was the first major cultural project to break ground after 9/11. In 2008, the Biltmore was renamed the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

When Grove started in 1975, MTC's annual budget was $172K. In the intervening years, MTC's operating budget has grown to about $27M. During his tenure, together with MTC's Board and development team, he has raised $350M to support the organization and help realize the mission and vision that Meadow created and launched in 1972.

Barry Grove said, "I am deeply proud, honored, and grateful to have spent the last 48 years in partnership with the incredible Artistic Director and pioneer in the field, Lynne Meadow.

Over all that time, we have thrived with an amazing and supportive Board of Directors-led by six extraordinary Board Chairs-our current Chair David Hodgson and Executive Committee Chairman Tom Secunda, and past leaders A. E. Jeffcoat, Edwin Cohen, Paul Kopperl, Michael Coles, and Peter Solomon. Over the years, they have been joined by many distinguished and deeply committed Board members. Lynne and I have been blessed to have an extremely gifted and talented staff, and to have collaborated with hundreds and hundreds of amazing and extraordinary artists.

I am stepping down to spend more time with my wife Maggie and extended family, and I will continue to explore teaching, mentoring, and consulting projects.

MTC and the theatre world have been my village, my Anatevka, my Grover's Corners, and my Brigadoon. Every night and on matinee afternoons, the streets and sidewalks are swarming with literally tens of thousands of theatregoers. They come here, leaving their technology behind and hopefully checking their cares and concerns at the door. And as they sit shoulder to shoulder with loved ones or strangers on either side, they do so with the sure and certain knowledge that they are about to experience something magical. I can't tell you how happy and humbled I am to have been part of this village."

Lynne Meadow said, "It has been my joy and honor to partner with Barry for so many decades. He has sustained MTC with dedication and vision, executing growth, working as a force in creating our reputation for excellence, and fostering integrity in every aspect of our work.

In 1973, when I offered him the job of Managing Director, he turned me down. I've never been one to take 'no' for an answer so I went back and asked him again a year later-from the moment he said 'yes,' he has organized, supervised, led, and inspired. He has led us through our triumphs and our crises and has been by my side for decades as a believer, advisor and executive. His impact was a gift, making my dream a reality and creating opportunities for hundreds of gifted artists.

I am forever grateful to him for the starring role he has played to help place MTC at the forefront of the American theatre."

MTC's Board Chairman David C. Hodgson said, "Barry Grove has been a driving force behind MTC's success for decades. His business acumen and love for the theatre are a powerful combination. At no time was his talent and commitment more evident than over the challenging years of the Covid pandemic, when he made sure the organization would survive and thrive. Generations of theatregoers owe him a debt of gratitude, as do I."

Thomas F. Secunda, MTC's Executive Committee Chairman, said, "Barry Grove has had a profound impact on the American theatre in his remarkable run as MTC's Executive Producer. I and the entire Board of Directors applaud his great leadership through the toughest economic times, and celebrate his distinguished career."

On behalf of MTC, Grove is a member of the LORT Board of Directors and the Tony Administration Committee, and has been a trustee of the Equity-League Pension and Health Trust Funds for over 30 years. He has previously served on the Broadway League Board of Governors, as the second-ever President of the Off-Off Broadway Alliance (now known as A.R.T/New York), the second-ever President of the Off-Broadway League, the Treasurer of TCG, and as a Board Member of BC/EFA. He has also served on numerous panels, including a term as Chairman of the theatre panel for both the NEA and the New York State Council on the Arts. In addition, he was a consultant and speaker for Commercial Theatre Institute and FEDAPT (Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Professional Theatre) with Soho Repertory Theatre, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Pan-Asian Repertory Theatre, National Black Theatre of Harlem, Wisdom Bridge Theater (Chicago), and New Playwrights' Theatre (Washington, DC).

He received the 2000 Edith Oliver Award for sustained Excellence Off-Broadway, the Arts and Business Council's 1997 Arts Management Excellence Award, and a citation from the New York City Council, which declared June 4, 1990 "Barry Grove Day."

Before Grove began his tenure at Manhattan Theatre Club, he was General Manager of the New Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island from 1973 to 1975. A Dartmouth graduate with high distinction in drama, he is a past Chairman and member of the Board of Overseers of the Hopkins Center/Hood Museum of Art, as well as a past President of the Dartmouth Club of New York. Grove has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University and is a lecturer at Yale University.

Below is an alphabetical list of selected productions and premieres produced for MTC by Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, and Barry Grove, Executive Producer, from 1975 to the present:

Absent Friends, A Small Family Business, and Woman in Mind by Alan Ayckbourn; Ain't Misbehavin' the Fats Waller Musical; The Assembled Parties, The American Plan, Three Days of Rain, and Eastern Standard by Richard Greenberg; Bella Bella and Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein; Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney; A Class Act by Linda Kline and Lonny Price; Collected Stories, The Loman Family Picnic, Sight Unseen, and Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies; Constellations by Nick Payne; Cost of Living by Martyna Majok (Pulitzer Prize); Crimes of the Heart (Pulitzer Prize) and The Miss Firecracker Contest by Beth Henley; Doubt (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play), Four Dogs and a Bone, Italian American Reconciliation, and Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley; The Father by Florian Zeller and translated by Christopher Hampton; Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, The Lisbon Traviata, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Tony Award for Best Play), and Lips Together, Teeth Apart by Terrence McNally; Heisenberg by Simon Stephens; How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel; Good People and Rabbit Hole (Pulitzer Prize) by David Lindsay-Abaire; Ink by James Graham; August Wilson's Jitney (Tony Award for Best Revival), King Hedley II, The Piano Lesson (Pulitzer Prize), and Seven Guitars; Ruben Santiago-Hudson's Lackawanna Blues; Loot by Joe Orton; Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis; The Mighty Gents by Richard Wesley; Murder Ballad by Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash; Prayer for the French Republic by Joshua Harmon; Pretty Fire by Charlayne Woodard; Proof by David Auburn (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play); Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Pulitzer Prize); Sell/Buy/Date by Sarah Jones; Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau; Sylvia by A.R. Gurney; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch; Valley Song by Athol Fugard; Venus in Fur by David Ives; Vietgone by Qui Nguyen; and The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez.

A nationwide search for Mr. Grove's replacement has now begun.