Bernard Gersten, Heroic Administrator Who Saved Two Major Theater Institutions, Dead At 97

For 18 years, Gersten was second-in-command to Joe Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater (where his interventions twice saved Papp’s and the company’s future), and he spent 28 years as executive producer at Lincoln Center Theater, where, alongside artistic directors Gregory Mosher and André Bishop, he “took a theater that had almost been completely dark for eight years and a failure for 20 and helped turn it into one of the nation’s leading nonprofit stage organizations.” – The New York Times