Playwrights Horizons Managing Director Leslie Marcus to Step Down at the End of 2023-24 Season

Leslie Marcus, who has served as Playwrights Horizons' Managing Director for three decades, is stepping down from the position in the summer of 2024, at the conclusion of the 2023-24 season. Over the course of her tenure, Marcus has guided the growth of Playwrights Horizons from a small, highly regarded Off-Broadway theater into one of the nation’s leading theater institutions—one that has continually evolved in its mission to advance the voices and new work of playwrights. The Board of Trustees has engaged Tom O'Connor Consulting Group to lead the search for Marcus’s successor. 

Marcus has had successful partnerships with the three Artistic Directors with whom she has led Playwrights Horizons: Don Scardino (1993-1996), Tim Sanford (1996-2020), and Adam Greenfield (2020-present). In this time, Playwrights Horizons has produced breakthrough plays and musicals by Will Arbery, Annie Baker, Tanya Barfield, Clare Barron, Adam Bock, Agnes Borinsky, David Cale, John J. Caswell, Jr., Kirsten Childs, Kia Corthron, Lisa D’Amour, Larissa FastHorse, Michael Friedman, Melissa James Gibson, David Greenspan, Adam Guettel, Amy Herzog, Lucas Hnath, Michael R. Jackson, Kenneth Lonergan, Craig Lucas, Taylor Mac, Richard Nelson, Bruce Norris, Lynn Nottage, Robert O’Hara, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl, Tori Sampson, Christopher Shinn, Jeanine Tesori, Anne Washburn, Doug Wright, and David Adjmi, whose Stereophonic concluded an immensely successful world premiere run on the Mainstage on December 17. Under Marcus’s leadership, the institution has been recognized with four Pulitzer Prizes, nine Tony Awards, and 47 OBIEs, among many other accolades. A 2008 Drama Desk Citation honored Playwrights Horizons’ “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.” Time Out New York’s 2023 Best of the City Awards named Playwrights Horizons “Best Theater Company.” 

When Playwrights Horizons had outgrown its building at 416 West 42nd Street, Marcus led the construction of a new facility on the site, with the groundbreaking taking place just weeks before the 9/11 attacks. She worked with the Board and staff to raise $32 million for the new building and the establishment of several endowments to sustain it—and the organization—into the future. A few years earlier, in 1997, she led the search for a new location for the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, at what is now Playwrights Downtown (440 Lafayette Street), where it moved from Theater Row; and secured a long-term lease on the downtown building. 

With longtime Board Chair Judith O. Rubin, Marcus has steadily expanded the Board, building a body that brought new skills and capacities to the benefit of the organization; created new Board committees; and engaged the Board more fully in the operations of the organization. Under her guidance, Playwrights Horizons has built revenue streams beyond ticket sales and philanthropy and, during the COVID-19 shutdown, launched several initiatives to provide meaningful support to theater-makers, including a relief fund to support artists in need, and a financial literacy program for artists, which is ongoing.

Marcus has helped Playwrights Horizons weather numerous challenges, including 9/11, the financial crisis of 2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic, among others, and, in her final years with the institution, has done much to ready it for future headwinds, and to ensure Playwrights’ impact continues to grow. This year, the organization will create a three-year strategic plan, update its bylaws, redesign and relaunch its website, and complete the first phase of a three-phase renovation of Playwrights Downtown. 

Leslie Marcus said, “I’ve spent thirty years doing something I love and that I'm extraordinarily proud of. What could be more wonderful than that? What has kept me at Playwrights all these years is the creativity and spirit of innovation that exists across the organization. Our mission is our north star, and it can never get old because it's about what is new. I work with a remarkable staff and Board. Together, we support writers and artists and launch their work into the theatrical canon. Although this post-pandemic time is extremely challenging, I know that Adam's leadership will successfully lead the way, and am gratified that an incoming Managing Director will arrive with a well-considered vision for the future.”

Judith O. Rubin, Co-Chair of Playwrights Horizons’ Board of Trustees, said, “I have worked closely with Leslie for more than three decades. Her talent, intelligence, and good judgment, along with an openness to often daunting new projects, brought this theater to a new level of maturity and stability. She shepherded the creation of our new building, thereby giving Playwrights a permanent home in which to continue to make possible the risk-taking work she enthusiastically supported throughout her time here.”

Sam Gonzalez, Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees, said, “It is thanks to Leslie’s exceptional leadership over the last 30 years that Playwrights Horizons stands on a firm foundation, from which we’ll navigate the changing non-profit theater landscape. We are sad to see her leave, but the search committee is confident that with her input we’ll find a new Managing Director to steward this singular institution in the years to come.”

Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield said, “One can't overstate Leslie Marcus's contributions to Playwrights Horizons and, by extension, to the landscape of new plays at large.  For the seventeen years I've worked at this theater—through recessions, boom times, hurricanes, floods, a pandemic, and even a few successes—Leslie has remained a stalwart optimist, propelling our theater into the future with savvy and faith. My sadness about her departure is offset only by my gratitude for all she's given us.”

Marcus’s leadership of Playwrights Horizons is the longest chapter in a career dedicated to public good. Prior, she was a Senior Management Consultant to the Mayor’s Office in New York, working on the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of the United Nations, after serving as Executive Director of the Host Committee for the 1992 Democratic National Convention. She was Finance Director of David Dinkins’ successful 1989 campaign for Mayor and Finance Director of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1988 campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Marcus has also been the Associate Director of Development for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Executive Director of the Battery Dance Company, and has served on the Board of A.R.T./New York and as a theater panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts. She currently serves on the Arts Advisory Committee of the Hudson Yards Hell's Kitchen Alliance. 

About Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons is a writer's theater dedicated to the development of contemporary American Playwrights, and to the production of innovative new work. In a city rich with cultural offerings, Playwrights Horizons' 52-year-old mission is unique among theaters of its size; the organization has distinguished itself by a steadfast commitment to centering and advancing the voice of the playwright. It’s a mission that is always timely, and one that’s necessary in the ongoing evolution of theater in this country.

Playwrights Horizons believes that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time, offering essential contributions to civic discourse and illuminating life’s greatest paradoxes. And they believe in the singularity of a writer’s voice, valuing the broad, eclectic spectrum and diversity of American writers. At Playwrights Horizons, writers are supported in every stage of their growth through commissions (engaging several of today’s most imaginative playwrights each year), New Works Lab, Soundstage audio program, and Almanac, the organization’s literary magazine.

Playwrights Horizons presents a season of productions annually on their two stages, each of which is a world, American, or New York premiere. Much like Playwrights Horizons’ work, their audience is risk-taking and adventurous; and the organization is committed to strengthening their engagement and feeding their curiosity through all of its programming, onsite and online.