As artistic director Shanta Thake will shape Lincoln Center's free public events
Next month Shanta Thake, 41, will take over as the artistic director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
She will complement the work of the “Center’s world-class arts organizations, activate its full 16-acres to serve more New Yorkers” the center’s board said in a statement announcing the decision this week.
Thake’s role, the board states, will be to meet the center’s Commitment to Change benchmarks by initiatives like Restart Stages, which are ten outdoor spaces for performance and rehearsals, run in collaboration with organizations from across New York City; organize blood drives, vaccinations and other civic activities; commission works like The Baptism. This three-part poem by Carl Hancock Rux, and directed by Carrie Mae Weems, pays tribute to the legacies of civil rights leaders John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, who battled for racial justice in the 1960s.
The center also offers mostly free musical, dance, theater and other performances in its outdoor spaces. As its Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer, Thake will be expected to expand such free programs to include under-represented art forms as well as add more Black, Hispanic, women and other minority performers.
Lincoln Center, which began operating in 1956, is built on land acquired by demolishing buildings housing workers and their families. “The displacement of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx families that took place prior to the construction of our campus is abhorrent,” notes the center’s Commitment to Change pledge. “We may never know its full impact on those dispossessed of the land on which Lincoln Center sits. But only by acknowledging this history can we begin to confront the racism from which our institution has benefited.”
New York City area before homes were demolished to build the Lincoln Center.
Thake will likely have little or no influence over the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Jazz, Film, Chamber Music Society, Juilliard School and School of American Ballet. These world renowned arts programs, which reside at the Lincoln Center, are run by their own respective directors and boards.
LIncoln Center today, with the Metropolitan Opera in foreground
Shanta Thake was formerly the Associate Artistic Director of the Public Theater in New York City. The theater has incubated several major dramas and musicals, including Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, now on Broadway and with box office revenues of over $1 billion. It also stages free Shakespeare plays in Central Park, with Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and other Hollywood actors.
Earlier, Thake spent 10 years as the artistic director of Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, which hosts performances by big name artists like David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys, as well as up-and-coming musicians.
Thake is the co-director of GlobalFEST, a non-profit organization which seeks to expand music performances by artists from around the world in communities across the U.S.
She served as the co-chair for The Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference in 2019 and 2020. She received a BA in Theater and Drama and a certificate in management from Indiana University.
Thake was born in Eagle River, Wisconsin. She and her two younger siblings grew up in southwest Indiana. Her German American father met her Indian mother in Malaysia, when he was serving in the Peace Corps. Thake lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband Tommy Kriegsman, the founder of a performing arts production company ArKtype, his daughter and their child.
“I moved to New York almost twenty years ago to the day, with big ideas about what was possible,” Thake said in a statement. Her original goal was to be an actor. Describing her shift to managing arts events, she told shejustis.com that she loves developing and watching “people do what they are born to do as performers.”
The type of artistic work she likes is “lowbrow brilliant … that comes from an emotional place”, she told The New York Times. “I’ve seen people dressed as chickens, covered in baby oil, dancing to the latest pop song.”
Thake’s goal now is to build a “Lincoln Center where all New Yorkers feel welcome no matter your background and where artists can shine and develop their craft in innovative and exciting new directions.”
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