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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

LINCOLN CENTER THEATER
ANNOUNCES MAJOR LEADERSHIP GIFT
FROM KEWSONG LEE AND ZITA EZPELETA

LEAR DEBESSONET
BEGINS AS ‘KEWSONG LEE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’ JULY 1

New York, NY (Tuesday, July 1) – Lincoln Center Theater announced today that it has received a generous leadership gift from Board Chair Kewsong Lee and his wife Zita Ezpeleta to fund Lear deBessonet’s Artistic Director role. Beginning today as the Kewsong Lee Artistic Director, deBessonet will lead the multi Tony Award-winning three-theater complex on the Lincoln Center campus into its next era.

“This is a momentous time at Lincoln Center Theater,” stated Lee. “Zita and I have loved our engagement with this special place over many years, and we are excited about LCT’s future and mission to bring exceptional theater to life. We are delighted to support LCT for everything that it is, and all that it can be. Lear is profoundly gifted, and we can’t wait to experience the exciting and imaginative work she brings to our stages and beyond.”

“Kewsong Lee is a passionate, visionary Board Chairman, whose tremendous energy and sense of possibility for Lincoln Center Theater has set us up for our next chapter of great success,” stated deBessonet. “He has forever impacted my life, and I couldn’t be more proud to carry his name as the Kewsong Lee Artistic Director.”

To download photos of Kewsong Lee and Lear deBessonet, click here.

Kewsong Lee, who has been a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Board of Directors since 2009, served as President before he was elected as Chair in 2023. Following a deep strategic planning process, he led the search that identified Lear deBessonet as Artistic Director as well as naming Bartlett Sher as Executive Producer and Mike Schleifer as Managing Director. The new leadership team formally assumes their roles on July 1, 2025, completing successfully the search and transition process that began in 2024.

Mr. Lee is the Founder and CEO of BellTower Partners, a private holding company that accesses and invests permanent capital in private companies. He previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of The Carlyle Group which he joined in 2013. Prior to Carlyle, Mr. Lee was a senior partner and a member of the Executive Management Group at Warburg Pincus. He has extensive public and private corporate board experience, including now serving as Chair of Ascot Group Limited, a global specialty insurance company. In addition to his role at Lincoln Center Theater, he serves as Vice Chair of the Partnership for New York City and member of the Board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Mr. Lee earned his AB in applied mathematics in economics at Harvard College and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is married to Zita Ezpeleta, who currently serves as the Chair of the Board of the School of American Ballet.

As life-long supporters of the arts, Ms. Ezpeleta and Mr. Lee recently created and funded the Zita Ezpeleta Artistic Director and Chair of Faculty at the School of American Ballet (SAB). Ms. Ezpeleta holds a JD degree from Harvard Law School and an AB in Literature from Harvard College.

Lear deBessonet is a Tony-nominated director and former Artistic Director of Encores! At New York City Center. Notable productions during her tenure at Encores include her direction of Once Upon a Mattress, Into the Woods, and Oliver! She directed and executive produced “Annie Live!” for NBC, and is the Founder of Public Works at the Public Theater where she served as Resident Director from 2012-2020. At the Public, she directed 200-person pageant productions of Hercules, The Odyssey, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest along with A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Shakespeare in the Park, Good Person of Szechuan (with the Foundry), Miss You Like Hell, and Romeo and Juliet. She is a passionate advocate for the power of arts in communities, and her TED Talk “What’s possible when the arts belong to everybody” has been viewed around the world. She served as Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Arts for EveryBody: an ambitious national arts and health project bringing together mayors, community health centers, and local artists in 18 cities and towns across America. She received the Drama League Founders Award and Best Director of a Musical Award, an Obie Award for Direction, the Ammerman Award, Lilly Award, and multiple Drama Desk, Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle nominations.

As previously announced, deBessonet will open her inaugural season with a new production of her celebrated New York City Center Gala revival of Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, starring Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, and Brandon Uranowitz with performances beginning on September 26, 2025.

The inaugural season will also include productions of Kyoto, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Whoopi Monologues at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater; The Comedy Series, Night Side Songs, Women Among Women and The Reading Series at LCT3 at the Claire Tow Theater; as well as expanded programming including a free Silent Disco Listening Party of the Warriors concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis and collaborations with groundbreaking artists including Chef Kwame Onwuachi of Tatiana. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, LCT will produce two special benefits in support of its productions and education programs. Dates and information about both events will be announced at a later date.

More information on these productions and other special events, including cast and creative teams, will be announced soon.

ABOUT LINCOLN CENTER THEATER

Commencing with the 2025-2026 season, Lear deBessonet will assume the role of Kewsong Lee Artistic Director, alongside Managing Director Mike Schleifer, Executive Producer Barlett Sher, Producer Nicole Kastrinos, Executive Director of Development and Planning Naomi Grabel, and LCT3 Artistic Director and Producer Maria Manuela Goyanes. This exciting new era, under this dynamic executive team’s leadership in collaboration with a dedicated board of directors and a full-time staff of 60, follows in the celebrated footsteps of André Bishop, who led the institution for 33 years.

LCT’s mission remains bringing exceptional theater to life – theater that can only happen at LCT. Building on a legacy of artistic excellence, LCT strives to expand what is possible: to make the magic of theatre more palpable, empowering visionary artists and extending the invitation for the community to join in celebrating the power of live performance. Honoring that legacy, the work, and the premium experiences that audiences have come to know as synonymous with the name of the institution itself, LCT is also dedicated to expanding the welcome mat to invite new audiences of all ages, staying true to the Lincoln Center founding mandate from John D. Rockefeller that the arts “are not just for the privileged few, but for the many.”

Founded in 1985 by Board Chair Hon. John V. Lindsay, Executive Producer Bernie Gersten and Director Gregory Mosher, Lincoln Center Theater is one of the leading nonprofit theaters in the country, producing an annual season of plays and musicals that have been seen by millions around the globe. It is one of 11 autonomous constituents of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Each year, LCT welcomes nearly 300,000 audience members to its home on the Lincoln Center campus and reaches an average of 4,500 students through its Open Stages education program across the tri-state area. With three theaters on site, LCT produces both new works and revivals in the 1,100-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, 299-seat Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and 112-seat Claire Tow Theater.

Over the last 40 years, Lincoln Center Theater and its outstanding productions have received many of the highest accolades, including 87 Tony Awards®, 97 Drama Desk Awards, 79 Outer Critics Cricle Awards, 33 Obies, 11 NY Drama Critics Circle Awards, and one Pulitzer Prize, as well as two finalists.

Production highlights include staples in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon South Pacific, The King and I and Carousel, Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady, McNeal, Oslo, Warhorse, The Coast of Utopia, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Other Desert Cities, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Contact, Anything Goes, Sarafina!, Six Degrees of Separation, The Sisters Rosensweig and Shakesperean classics Twelfth Night and Henry IV, among many others. The new season will commence with Ragtime on the Vivan Beaumont stage.

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