Manhattan Theatre Club

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The Manhattan Theatre Club is a theatrical company that was incorporated in New York City in 1970.

MTC is one of the only companies in the United States committed solely to producing new plays and musicals. In 1972, Lynne Meadow was hired as Artistic Director. Three years later, Barry Grove was hired as Managing Director. He now serves as Executive Producer, and his ongoing partnership with Meadow is one of the longest in New York City theatrical history.

Grants from the Shubert Organization, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts enabled MTC to stay afloat in its early years while it steadily built its reputation for providing established and new playwrights, including Athol Fugard, John Guare, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, John Patrick Shanley, Donald Margulies, Anne Meara, Sam Shepard, Arthur Kopit, and Charles Busch, with a forum for their work.

MTC, with a subscriber base of 20,000, now produces seven plays a year in the Biltmore Theatre on West 47th Street and at the New York City Center on West 55th Street.

Performers who have appeared in MTC productions include Robert de Niro, Nancy Marchand, Swoosie Kurtz, Nell Carter, Irene Cara, Barnard Hughes, Christine Baranski, Bernadette Peters, James Woods, JoBeth Williams, Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, David Hyde Pierce, Dianne Weist, Holly Hunter, Patricia Richardson, James Coco, Kevin Bacon, Zoe Wanamaker, Kathy Bates, Stockard Channing, Laura San Giacomo, John Turturro, John Pankow, Nathan Lane, Gillian Anderson, Anthony Heald, Laura Linney, Dennis Boutsikaris, Frances Conroy, Kevin Spacey, Tony Roberts, Mary-Louise Parker, Polly Draper, Julie Andrews, Rue McClanahan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Debra Messing, Edward Herrmann, David Strathairn, Elaine May, Alan Arkin, Linda Lavin, Tony Roberts, Michele Lee, Cherry Jones, Cynthia Nixon, and Tyne Daly.

MTC has won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Achievement, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Excellence, and a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Achievement. Its productions, performers, and playwrights have garnered fifteen Tony Awards, four Pulitzer Prizes, forty-five Obies, and twenty-five Drama Desk Awards, as well as numerous New York Drama Critics' Circle, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Awards.