Bernard Gersten

Bernard Gersten, born January 30, 1923, in Newark, New Jersey, was an American theatrical producer whose career spanned more than six decades and helped define the landscape of nonprofit theater in the United States. The son of Henrietta Gersten and Jacob Israel Gersten, a garment worker and chauffeur who served as secretary at the local synagogue, Gersten was raised in a traditional Jewish immigrant household. He developed an interest in acting and theater during his years at West Side High School before enrolling at Rutgers University.

When the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gersten enlisted in the quartermaster corps and was stationed in Hawaii. A turning point came when he attended a base performance of Macbeth featuring Maurice Evans, then a Captain, and Dame Judith Anderson. The experience prompted him to transfer into special services, where he worked on military productions and built foundational skills as a stage manager and producer.

After the war, Gersten obtained his Equity card and launched his professional career when Maurice Evans recruited him as assistant stage manager for the national tour of the GI Hamlet. His Broadway career began in 1945 with Hamlet. He subsequently joined the Actor's Lab in Los Angeles, where he first encountered Joseph Papp, who would become his most significant professional collaborator. In the late 1950s, John Houseman hired Gersten as a stage manager at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, where he worked as a production stage manager. His final assignment in that capacity was on the original production of Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Gersten was politically active, attending Communist Party meetings and participating in union organizing efforts. He and Papp both campaigned for Henry A. Wallace's 1948 presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket, and Gersten was also involved in advocacy surrounding the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In 1958, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and invoked the Fifth Amendment. He retained his position at the American Shakespeare Festival only because both John Houseman and Katharine Hepburn intervened on his behalf.

In 1960, Papp invited Gersten to join the New York Shakespeare Festival as associate producer, a role that became full-time by 1964. Over the following eighteen years, the two built the NYSF into the preeminent nonprofit theater in the United States. Their tenure at the organization established its home at the old Astor Library downtown and encompassed dozens of Shakespeare productions alongside free performances in Central Park. The Papp-Gersten era brought early national attention to dramatists including David Rabe, Sam Shepard, Liz Swados, John Guare, and Michael Bennett, and to performers including Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones, Al Pacino, George C. Scott, Sam Waterston, Edward Herrmann, and Colleen Dewhurst. Notable productions from this period include Hair, That Championship Season, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, Streamers, Buried Child, an adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and A Chorus Line. Gersten also produced at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi E. Newhouse theaters during the NYSF's residency there between 1974 and 1977.

A central contribution Gersten made during this period was demonstrating that a nonprofit theater could produce commercially without depending on outside commercial producers. Beginning with the transfer of Two Gentlemen of Verona to Broadway in 1971, and amplified by the extraordinary success of A Chorus Line, this approach transformed the financial model of the NYSF and influenced nonprofit institutions across the country.

In 1968, Gersten married Cora Cahan, who was then touring as a dancer with modern dance companies. Cahan would go on to co-found the Joyce Theater with Eliot Feld in 1982 and later serve as president of The New 42nd Street beginning in 1990. The couple had two children, Jenny Cahan Gersten and Jilian Cahan Gersten.

Gersten's partnership with Papp ended in 1978 when a dispute over producing Michael Bennett's Ballroom led Papp to dismiss him. Gersten subsequently produced Ballroom independently on Broadway, along with John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect. In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola brought him to Zoetrope Studios as executive vice president of creative affairs. During his time there, Gersten served as executive producer of Coppola's One From the Heart and three additional films, and co-produced live-orchestra presentations of Abel Gance's silent film Napoléon in venues around the world. He then joined Radio City Music Hall as vice president for live original content, a tenure that included a large-scale production of Porgy and Bess featuring a company of ninety performers.

In 1985, Gersten was brought in as a consultant to the board of Lincoln Center Theater, which had been dormant for four years. He proposed a plan to revive the Vivian Beaumont Theater and was hired as executive producer alongside artistic director Gregory Mosher. He held that position until his retirement in 2013, later partnering with artistic director André Bishop. Over the course of his tenure, Gersten oversaw more than 150 productions at Lincoln Center Theater. He received fifteen Tony Awards for productions during his career, as well as the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013. His producing credits also include Tony Award wins for Best Play in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Gersten died on April 27, 2020, from pancreatic cancer at the age of 97.