Fun Home Producer Mike Isaacson to Receive Robert Whitehead Award

Tony-winning Broadway producer Mike Isaacson will present the Commercial Theater Institute’s Robert Whitehead Award for "outstanding achievement in commercial theatre producing" at a reception at Sardi’s on Tuesday, March 14.

The award is inspired by the five-decade-long career of Tony-winning Broadway producer Robert Whitehead, who died in 2002. CTI is the nation’s only formal program that professionally trains commercial theater producers. The award honors a graduate of CTI for outstanding achievement in commercial theater producing. CTI presented the first Robert Whitehead Award in 1993 to Benjamin Mordecai and Susan Quint Gallin.

Since 2000, Isaacson has co-headed Fox Theatricals with Kristin Caskey and has produced more than 21 Broadway musicals and plays, national tours, off-Broadway plays, and London productions. In June of 2015, he received the Tony Award for Best Musical for Fun Home, written by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.

His other producing highlights include The Humans (2016 Tony Award, Best Play); Bring It On The Musical (2013 Tony nomination for Best Musical); Red (2010 Tony Award, Best Play); Legally Blonde the Musical (2011 Olivier Award, Best Musical); Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002 Tony Award, Best Musical); You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; If/Then by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey and starring Idina Menzel; The Seagull starring Kristin Scott Thomas; Caroline, or Change by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori; and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Gary Sinise, among others. His productions have received more than 96 Tony Award nominations and 29 Tony Awards.

Isaacson is the third executive producer in the Muny’s 99-year history and has produced 35 shows there. For 14 years, he also supervised the U.S. Bank Broadway Series, bringing more than 100 Broadway productions to St. Louis’s Fabulous Fox theater. In 2010, he received the Broadway League's Samuel J. L'Hommedieu Award for Outstanding Achievement in Presenter Management. Isaacson has also served on the board of governors, the executive committee and the governance committee of the Broadway League. He was most recently honored for "Excellence in the Arts" by the Arts and Education Council in St. Louis.