Second Stage Theater Announces Interim Artistic Director

The Board of Trustees of Second Stage Theater has announced that Bennett Leak, Second Stage Theater’s director of artistic production, has been named interim artistic director for the 2024-25 season.

Founder and current artistic director Carole Rothman, who remains with the company through August 2024, will focus on this season’s remaining works, including the current Broadway production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate, the Next Stage Festival production of The Apiary by Kate Douglas, the upcoming production of Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, and Alexis Scheer’s world premiere play Breaking the Story. Leak will continue to work alongside Rothman on these productions while the board conducts a nationwide search for a permanent artistic director.

Leak, who has worked in New York theater in various capacities for nearly two decades, joined Second Stage in 2015 as the director of special events, producing large scale fundraisers and raising over $7 million for the organization, eventually becoming associate artistic director in 2019 and director of artistic production in 2021. Throughout his tenure, Leak has produced over 20 plays both on and off Broadway, including the Tony winning revival of Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg and Tony nominated plays Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis and Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage. He has shepherded works through development and produced developmental readings and workshops, including the inaugural Next Stage Festival of new plays and early career writers.