Bernard Gersten

“The idea of a theater as a group of people who come together to work hard yet joyfully, who know how to love and how to forgive each other, and who are happy in what is both the most terrible and the most beautiful trade in the world.”

-- Italian director Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997)

Bernard Gersten died peacefully in his home in New York on Monday, April 27^th 2020. He was 97 years young, his long life sustained by love. He lived and lived and lived for his wife of 52 years, Cora Cahan; his two beloved daughters, Jenny and Jilian; his nieces, Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros, Kate Gersten Shire and Yetta Hudson; as well as his son-in-law, Brian Shuman; and his grandchildren, Gus and Leo Reale and Talia and Gracie Shuman. Upon receiving the 2013 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, Bernie remarked that his “beloved family has been, for me, my lifetime achievement.”

Bernie’s life has four epic chapters professionally. His time in the army, which also politicized him; his time during the formative years of the Public Theater; his time at American Zoetrope (and the other parts of the “wandering years”); and his time re-inventing Lincoln Center Theater. It’s extraordinary -- when one imagines each of those acts -- how many of you were essential to the plotlines. We are always aware that Bernie’s life was made more meaningful by people, and people who loved being part of the art -- its chaos and its sublime beauty, and mostly, for Bernie, the fun that could be derived from it all.

On the other hand, Bernie’s personal life was singular. After a whirlwind romance capped off by a marriage proposal in Puerto Rico, Bernie and Cora were married on April 21, 1968 in the Anspacher Theater at the Public. Just months before -- in that theater -- Bernie took Cora on one of their first dates to the opening night (the first of many to come) of the first production at the Public -- the new musical, HAIR. Since that time, Bernie and Cora’s home was a reflection of their professional lives. Every night at home, you would find Bernie was cooking for the family, and often for artists and co-workers who would pun and sing and strategize. And almost every New Year’s Day hundreds of us would convene to start the new year together, with baked beans. A tradition we cherished.

Bernie was a self-proclaimed hedonist; he believed that one should wring out all the pleasures from life. Therefore, it is most meaningful -- as we consider his life -- how much genuine pleasure we derived from his.

You can read more about him in the NYT obituary or on this Wikipedia page (thank you, Eric Bogosian). In these following pages, we hope you’ll share a story about Bernie with us and each other.

So many of you asked what you could do in lieu of flowers. Thank you. Please consider making a donation to the Bernard Gersten Productions Fund at Lincoln Center Theater or to the E. O’Reilly Fund at Memorial Sloan Kettering.