New York City CenterA nonprofit known for its star-studded short-term music renaissance as well as its contemporary dance program, is appointing a New Jersey arts administrator as its new leader.
The City Center Board of Directors has selected Michael S. Rosenberg, now executive director of the McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, NJ, as its next president and chief executive officer. Rosenberg will begin on November 1, succeeding Arlene Shuler, who step down after 19 years at the organization.
“City Center is a unique performing arts hub, not only in New York, but in the United States, with a combination of dance and musical theater,” Rosenberg said in an interview. “It’s impossible to miss artists and performances, over and over again.”
Rosenberg said he’s watched many shows at Downtown over the years, and he considers a 1988 show he saw there, Bill Irwin’s “Largely New York,” as having significantly influenced thinking. his to the theater.
City Center, founded in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and operating in a owned by the city Midtown’s neo-Moorish theater is a sizable institution: Its current annual budget is $29 million, and it employs 157 people (some working part-time).
The chairman of the City Center board, Richard E. Witten, said the organization is financially sound and has many candidates to choose Shuler’s successor. “We’ve seen a lot of people involved in this process, and Michael has stood out on many occasions,” says Witten.
Rosenberg, 54, has worked at McCarter since 2018. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade as executive director of La Jolla Playhouse, a San Diego theater with a history of developing plays. musicals associated with Broadway.
City Center is best known for its two annual shows: Encores!, which is a series of minimal concert-style productions of older Broadway musicals, many of which have been forgotten or forgotten. abandoned because – for one reason or another – they were considered non-existent, and Fall for Dance, an affordable festival of international dance troupes.
Favourite! is in the early stages of its own transformation – Lear deBessonet take over the program During the pandemic, and her first season on the show live was tough: The first two shows, “The Tap Dance Kid” and “The Life”, weren’t particularly well received, handshake about whether Encores! ever got into trouble. But then deBessonet directed the revival of “Into the Woods” which was wildly received and quickly moved to Broadway, where it was both popular and successful. The show also features a new music director, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, and a creative director of production, Clint Ramos, who is working with deBessonet.
Both Rosenberg and Witten said they fully support Encores! program. “Not every show has been a huge hit, but it was a successful year in terms of what was planned and what Lear hoped to do, and it was a huge success,” says Witten. “We are very excited about the upcoming year.”
Before the pandemic, City Center also hosted an Encores! offset – Favorite! Off Center – reviewed the musical Off Broadway; that show hasn’t returned yet, and Rosenberg says its future is undecided, but “it’s another exciting way to open up the rules and have more projects to choose from.”
City Center has drawn up plans for 2022-23 season that one is sturdier than the one that just ended, thinner than usual because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The next season will include a variety of dance styles, including the first Fall Dance Festival to feature international companies since 2019, as well as work by Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, The Theater Canadian National Ballet, Harlem Dance Theater, Ballet Hispánico and many more artists.
The theater’s program will include a fundraiser for the musical “March,” starring Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond. And then, next spring, Encores! there will be revivals of “Light in the Piazza”, “Dear World” and “Oliver!”
