Jack Viertel

Jack Viertel began his professional career playing National bottleneck steel guitar behind Bonnie Raitt, Son House, and The Pointer Sisters. He soon graduated to the theater world, where he spent seven years as a critic, two as the dramaturg for the Mark Taper Forum, and the succeeding three decades as Creative Director/Senior Vice President of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. In that capacity he worked with myriad artists including August Wilson, Tony Kushner, David Henry Hwang, Maury Yeston, Cy Coleman, Stephen Sondheim, George C. Wolfe, Jerry Zaks and many others. For two of those decades (2001-2021) he was also the Artistic Director of New York City Center’s Encores! series, producing 65 musical revivals. On Broadway he produced the Patti Lupone revival of GYPSY and conceived the long-running Smokey Joe’s Café, the critically acclaimed After Midnight, and served as the dramaturg for Hairspray, Dear Evan Hansen, and The Outsiders. The musical and movie The Prom were developed from his original concept. He taught musical theater at NYU Tisch School of the Arts for a decade and is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Secret Life of The American Musical. He lives with his wife Linda in Tarrytown, New York and Little Deer Isle, Maine.