Camelot (Vivian Beaumont Theater) (New York, USA)
Camelot (Vivian Beaumont Theater)
The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broadway theater outside the Theater District near Times Square. In 2023's spring, Vivian Beaumont Theater will bring the world of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot to vibrant life once again with a new version of the classic tale.
The Vivian Beaumont Theater opened to the public on October 21, 1965. Designed by the renowned architect Eero Saarinen and named for Vivian Beaumont Allen, a prominent New York philanthropist, the Beaumont was originally the home of the now-defunct Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, which closed in 1973 after nine seasons (two of which were presented in a temporary theater erected in Washington Square Park). From 1973 to 1977, Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival was in residence at the Beaumont. From 1978 through 1985, the Beaumont was mostly rented to outside producers or was not used at all; a new resident company was formed in 1979, but it only presented one Beaumont season in 1980-81.
In 1985, the building's current management -- Lincoln Center Theater -- was established. Former New York Mayor John V. Lindsay assembled a new board of directors and signed Gregory Mosher as Director and Bernard Gersten as Executive Producer. In 1991, Linda LeRoy Janklow and Andre Bishop succeeded Messrs. Lindsay and Mosher as Chairman and Artistic Director. Lincoln Center Theater has not only outlasted all the prior managements combined, but it has become America's largest not-for-profit theater, producing a year-round program of plays and musicals at the Beaumont and at various other theaters around New York City.
The theater has hosted several popular productions since the late 1980s, including Anything Goes, Contact, The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific, The King and I, and My Fair Lady.