♪♪ Hecht: Being a nonprofit theater in New York City is so essential for our sense of community.

Grove: The Manhattan Theatre Club is a not-for-profit theater center and theater company.

We produce all our own work.

We have three theaters.

MTC's mission, which I actually wrote on my first day on the job in July of 1972, was to develop and present new work in the theater by American and international artists.

It's impossible, though.

It's a prison to think things are impossible.

I have done five plays for Manhattan Theatre Club.

This is my seventh show.

Two shows.

10 shows.

Nine productions.

Two productions.

Nine shows.

Four shows.

70 shows, which sounds like a lot, but they were spread out over 50 years.

Here we are.

Hello, sir.

I'm off to warm up.

There you go.

Man: For as long as this theater has been here, it's been Lynn and Barry, and that's the way I think of the Manhattan Theater Club.

I've never seen two people who have worked together that long who are not married.

[ Laughs ] I think they are kind of married, whether they want to admit it or not.

They are a cultural change-maker.

Look at all the prizes they've won.

The execution has been stupendous.

To have a place where you know you can come back with new work time after time is kind of miraculous.

Thank you for giving me my Broadway debut.

It's a pleasure.

You know, these are the sort of relationships you dream about, that you get to grow up in a theater.

[ Cheers and applause ] It always felt like you were home.

Meadow: In a time when there are so many challenges to actually making art and making theater, we just have to remember to be as bold as we can and to speak out as much as we can and to support new voices.

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